"The Great Evil. Where does it come from?"

Rating: 8/10 (4 December 2011)

The element of truth about all wars - "The whole f.....' thing is about property" - is only tangentially explored in "The Thin Red Line". The 1949 John Wayne film "Sands of Iwo Jima" expressed it much more directly - "That's war boy, tradin' real estate for men". Though the concept is well conveyed here, one's thoughts are sidetracked by the meandering voice over narration of various cast members questioning the meaning of life, death and matters in between. While I don't fault a picture for making the observation, it gets tiresome when stretched to almost three hours duration. I pretty much got the point at about the two hour mark, sooner actually, but was repeatedly amazed to discover that the picture had no intention of quitting.
What puzzled me as well was relating to the cast list as indicated on the DVD cover. There's his name - George Clooney - but again, it was past the two hour mark when he showed up for a quick cameo. Conversely, Travolta had double the screen time, but wasn't even mentioned.
So I guess I understand that it's supposed to be a different kind of war film, an anti-war war film if you will. That's OK, that's a point of view as well. Perhaps though, someone like Lt. Col. Tall (Nick Nolte) could have explained that if we don't take this island, the Japs will continue to use it's air strip to bomb bloody hell out of the rest of our troops across the Pacific, just like they did at Pearl Harbor when nobody was looking. Yes, war is hell, but the failure of war can be hell too and maybe even more devastating. Retrofitting sentiments about Vietnam into a World War II picture just didn't quite click for me, though I can appreciate the artistic elements that went into making the picture.