atmospheric and 'real'

Rating: 8/10 (13 June 2008)

It always sounds a bit lame when you hear a 20 something who's never actually lived through a war let alone be part of one praise a war film for it's 'realism', but this is exactly how I imagine a real war to be. No bias is put on the emotions of one side, both Americans and Japanese are shown to have the same emotions of fear, anger and in some cases insanity. Usually in war films it's only a small minority that show fear and sometimes cowardess and I sometimes imagine that in reality there would be a hell of a lot more soldiers displaying these emotions and characteristics, as shown in the thin red line where most characters at some point experience this, even the hardened Seargent played by Sean Penn.
Despite all this two characters really stand out for me. Elias Koates is fantastic, playing the 'professional businessman turned soldier' with equal skill and magnanimousness as Hanks does in Saving Private Ryan, and Nick Nolte as Lt. Tall, an uncompromising experienced soldier in his first real war. The standoff between those two on the hill was a real standout moment.
This is my first Mallick film, despite being close to buying Badlands on a few occasions but I'll definitely be buying that one soon. I can see why film buffs revere him so highly. His sweeping style and imaginitivity behind the camera lends really well to epic war films and I'm surprised that he hasn't done one before this. I can imagine the same style will also translate well into westerns and road movies too! All in all, despite not breaking new ground in terms of the battle scenes, Mallick tries to show a more human, spiritual and moral side of war and in that I think he succeeds. The characters seem more 'real' than possibly in any other war film I've seen since the huge raft of British WWII films of the 60's and for that alone I think it's a great accomplishment