The Thin Red Line (1998)

• Year: 1998
• Released: 15 Jan 1999
• Country: United States
• Adwords: Nominated for 7 Oscars. 21 wins & 47 nominations total
• IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120863/
• Rotten Tomatoes: https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/The_Thin_Red_Line
• Metacritics: https://www.metacritic.com/movie/the-thin-red-line
• Available in: 720p, 1080p,
• Language: English, Tok Pisin, Japanese, Greek
• MPA Rating: R
• Genre: Drama, History, War
• Runtime: 170 min
• Writer: James Jones, Terrence Malick
• Director: Terrence Malick
• Cast: Jim Caviezel, Sean Penn, Nick Nolte
• Keywords: based on novel or book, world war ii, survival, 1940s, soldier,

	7.6/10
	78/100

The Thin Red Line Storyline

In World War II, the outcome of the battle of Guadalcanal will strongly influence the Japanese advance into the Pacific theater. A group of young soldiers are brought in as a relief for the battle-weary Marines. The exhausting fight for a strategically-positioned airfield that allows control over a 1000-mile radius puts the men of the Army rifle company C-for-Charlie through hell. The horrors of war form the soldiers into a tight-knit group; their emotions develop into bonds of love and even family. The reasons for this war get further away as the world for the men gets smaller and smaller until their fighting is for mere survival and the life of the other men with them.

The Thin Red Line Play trailer

The Thin Red Line Photos

The Thin Red Line Torrents Download

The Thin Red Line Subtitles Download

The Thin Red Line Movie Reviews

Malick’s Heavenly War

This film is unlikely to be appreciated by audiences reared upon a diet of dumbed-down Hollywood action fare. However, if you’re prepared to sit down and watch THE THIN RED LINE with no interruptions and give it the attention it deserves, you’ll be rewarded with one of the most intelligent, poetic and stunningly beautiful films you’re ever likely to see.

Director Terrence Malick’s films are alive with a sense of pure cinema with every frame delivering such detail and richness that you could swear you were there. The only other person capable of bringing such an immediate sense of time and place and sheer nuance of film (although in a completely different way) is David Lean, another major league craftsman.

Here, again, Malick uses his customary voice-over device although this time as a means of vocalising the abstract thoughts of the various soldiers as they struggle to make some sense of the conflict. It’s an interesting approach which allows the audience to identify with the characters in a far less superficial way than in, say, SAVING PRIVATE RYAN (the film THE THIN RED LINE is most often and most unfairly compared to). Malick is also not afraid to take time to illustrate the continuing natural backdrop to the carnage. Mother Nature almost seems to be occupying a pivotal supporting role as a detached observer on the sidelines, calmly and inscrutably watching the chaos develop.

It’s a measure of Malick’s complete disinterest with the normal conventions of Hollywood that actors such as Lucas Haas, Vigo Mortensen, Jason Patric, Mickey Rourke, Martin Sheen and Billy Bob Thornton all spent months in Queensland Australia and the Solomon Islands filming roles that ultimately ended up on the cutting room floor. Blink and you’ll also miss major marquee players such as John Travolta and George Clooney. The stand-out performances come from Jim Caviezel and, especially, Nick Nolte.

Nolte just seems to be getting better and better as he gets older and his portrayal of tyrant Colonel Tall is something to see. I have never seen anyone express such an impotent sense of rage, anger and fury than Nolte does here. It’s a fantastic performance from a real pro and it’s a mystery to me why he didn’t get an Oscar.

John Toll’s pristine cinematography and Hans Zimmer’s wonderfully evocative (Oscar-winning) score are other strong elements. The unusual music and visuals contrast so well that Malick sometimes fades out the noise of the shouting, explosions and guns, an effect that only serves to heighten the emotional power of the experience further.

You won’t see a more beautiful film about the horrors of war. Movies like this make the task of trawling through the weekly diet of dumb formulaic junk served up by Hollywood almost seem worthwhile.

Don’t be fooled: this is not very good at all

Every group has its pantheon of saints whether they are sportsmen, artists, politicians, salesmen, folk singers, bankers, crooks or, of course, film makers. And for those who earn their grubby pennies in the whacky world of making movies Terrence Malik is up there as one of the greatest saints. So criticising the man and his work is not just like giggling at a funeral but dropping your trousers and taking a dump in full view of the corpse. It just isn’t done, and anyone who indulges in that kind of behaviour – or dares to criticise St Terrence and one of his films – is quite obviously a candidate for the funny farm. Well, perhaps. And perhaps, in the case of Malik, perhaps not. With this, The Thin Red Line, just what is the man trying to do?

It is, by turns, part post-modern war movie, South Sea travelogue, art house something-or-other and even touches on your actual straight-down-the-line gung-ho shoot-em-up before it reminds itself of its pacifist motivation and resorts to art house something-or-other. The technical term for The Thin Red Line is ‘a mess’ and that is putting it charitably. In another review I warned of the incessant, remorseless wall-to-wall sentimental soundtrack which does its very best to manipulate the feelings and thus the judgment of the viewer, and that warning applies to this film, too. I can best describe the soundtrack as chocolate box church music meets Joe Schmaltz and his Touchy-Feely All-Stars. And that description, too, is somewhat charitable, and for a film of this length – 163 minutes – I suspect the soundtrack composer was paid by the hour.

I must confess that I was well on the point of throwing in the towel after about 20 minutes. Someone once said of Richard Wagner that after hearing his music for half an hour, you look at your watch and realise only five minutes have passed. Malik seems to share that same affliction in The Thin Red Line. But I took into account the director’s current reputation and decided to stick it out. I could, I told myself, be missing something and Malik deserved an honest hearing. As it turned out, I wasn’t and he didn’t.

I was stumped right from the off by a rather long shot of an alligator/crocodile entering a river and slowly sinking beneath the water. Significant or not? Well, to be honest, I don’t know, although as that, or another, alligator/croc turns up in the film for no particularly good reason several hours later, tied to a plank in the back of a truck and surrounded by battle-weary troops on an R&R break, the odds are surely on ‘significant’. But don’t ask me how or in what way.

There followed quite a long digression (it, too, seemed longer than it probably was) of two squaddies relaxing with and relating to a village of South Sea islanders – paddling in the sea, being friendly with the locals, poetically musing on nature, you know, that kind of thing – before the navy show up and we realise the two have gone AWOL. Once interned to the ship’s hold, it is then we are led to believe that the film will finally get going. And it does in a kind of way, but, well, not really. One young farm lad confesses to the sergeant that he’s scared, another steals a pistol, a third reveals that he was once an officer but was busted to private – Malik is almost in danger of becoming conventional but confirmed cineastes will know full well there’s no danger of that. So on it goes.

At one point Nick Nolte does a ‘is this man mad or just really, really committed’ act, but the film isn’t about that, either. Gorgeous George Clooney even puts in an appearance as the captain replacing the ‘good man’ unjustly sent home in disgrace, but after earning his million or two salary for the very brief guest spot, he, too, disappears.

What were you trying to do, Mr Malik? Tell us, because I sure as hell don’t know. Were you honestly trying to inform us that ‘war is bad’? Are you really still not convinced we don’t know that? And what was with all the, to my ears insufferably trite, cod ‘deep’ insights intoned every ten minutes or so in voice-over? Here are three random examples: ‘War doesn’t ennoble men, it poisons the soul’; ‘Love? Where does it come from?’; and ‘What’s keeping us from reaching out and touching the glory?’ That last is especially vacuous. There are well-directed action war sequences which would not disgrace any steak and potatoes action film, but after all the cod philosophising and insights it should seem obvious that Malik is not in the least bit interested in that kind of cinematic titillation. If anyone reading this wants to hear at first hand just how nasty and dehumanising war is, forgot about watching a confused and confusing Malik opus and simply ask your grandfather, father, uncle or brother.

For this viewer at least Malik’s The Thin Red Line is not just not a masterpiece, it is dangerously close to being an insulting piece of self-indulgence. Malik has a duty to provide us with, at least, the means and context to try to understand what he is attempting to do. If he has made and is presenting a more complex piece than Son Of Rambo Rides Again: The Dinosaurs, Malik is most entitled to expect the viewer to engage his or her intelligence and make something of an effort. But that simply isn’t the case with this film. It is simply a mish-mash of sentiment, middle-brow insight, would-be stunning imagery, syrupy music and stock war movie characters, all somehow cemented together with lashings of liberal fellow feeling. And that does not make it a great or even good film. To put it mildly.

Terrence Malick’s masterpiece

As I said in my Tree of Life review Terrence Malick’s style is one I highly appreciate rather than adore. That doesn’t stop me though from liking his films a great deal. The Thin Red Line was my first Malick, and after seeing five of them it is still my favourite.

The pace is meditative, but I had no problem with that. This film wasn’t only a war film, it was also a meditation of war, so the pacing was appropriate I feel, not only that I find this meditative pace is a characteristic of Terrence Malick, his films being visually beautiful yet meditative.

As is the case with his work, Malick does do a superb job directing, the visuals are astounding and the music is very haunting as well. The story may seem pretentious, but I was too transfixed and absorbed by what was going on to care, and how it treated war was interesting and different with “Every man fights his own war”.

The action is genuinely tense with an atmosphere that is genuinely authentic(for example you can smell the sweat literally), and I also found some scenes quite moving. The dialogue is provokes thought and the characters are often real in a compelling sense. The acting is as good as can be, particularly from Sean Penn and Nick Nolte.

All in all, a fine film and Malick’s masterpiece. 10/10 Bethany Cox