long and sometimes boring, but none the less artistic and stupendously performed

Rating: 9/10 (27 January 1999)

The most irritating aspect of The Thin Red Line is the narration in the background. The narrator has more lines than the characters themselves!!! The Thin Red Line is a long, intricately detailed and the most well-acted movie I have seen in close to a year. The quality of the script and the performances of the actors (especially Nolte) is far superior to anything Private Ryan can offer. In Saving Private Ryan, the first 30 minutes made the entire movie (and Tom Hanks of course), but in The Thin Red Line every scene, dialogue, and character is so well defined that it makes us wonder how superficially we choose to lead our own lives a times. In my opinion, Malick's got the Oscar in the bag for Best Director.