Thoughts on The Thin Red Line?

Wasn't the Hollywood standard fare you watched in Saving Private Ryan but it was a good movie that was well received by the awards groups.

It was long and I would say for more mature audiences that took the time to watch it and understand it.

It's one of my very favorite films of all time.

My favorite scene, or moment of time, in any movie, ever, is that scene after the battle is over when Nick Nolte's character takes a sad, like hopeless deep breath and his face is just... so spent and wrecked and utterly disappointed. It's like 3 seconds of film but it's so perfect. I don't know if I can capture that emotion or make a definitive statement of that human condition in words, but we all know it and I've never seen acting so real and so accurate at capturing it.

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Better than Saving Private Ryan.

I think a lot of the regulars on this board agree with that.

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Very good movie and I think it was better than Saving Private Ryan. Love the artsy direction and how it captured the psychological horror of war.

It WAS better than CATS though. I will watch it again and again.

You must remember how Saving Private Ryan was shoved down our throats though.


I remember having to watch the storming the beach scene in the Library during a class where we me a guy who was on the beach invasion. This was after 9/11. Propaganda!

Oh man. People HATE this movie. I mean, people line up to talk shite about this film.

For my money it's one of the finest war movies ever, a visual feast, and it has this dark mediatiative quality that really portrays the futility of war. So many scenes stand out,obviously the cinematography on the ridgeline scene, the scene where they overrun the Japanese camp,The river scene with Adrian Brody, the infusion of nature with man throughout, the scene with Nolte, the wide shots from the fleet, the killer narration. Caviezel and Koteas were excellent.

I love every second of Thin Red Line. Malick nailed it.I will never understand how people hate on it.

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Best war movie

Because they show real fear and hiding in the grass an refusing to take that hill..
Just like they say 15% of rifles were actually fired by Americans in D day...most were trying to be humans and stay alive buried in the sand...

Thin red line is like Gallipoli and shows typical chain of command and all those Aussies lost for no reason but stubbornness ....to say we didn't also have that on our side in wwii is myopic.

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Well, I wouldn't agree with that. The problem is that it's just cartoonish in its depiction of the chain of command (and even, to some degree, the lower enlisted).

I like the movie for other reasons - it is beautiful and it was one of the earliest to really show that fear and existential self-reflection that a lot of soldiers in combat experience, but...

Malick seems absolutely beholden to this weird Heidegger-ish Christian ideology where he glorifies the past beyond reason (a lot of "noble savage" references in his work) and rails against what technology does to the framing of human existence.

I don't find this movie necessarily political at all, but he is certainly looking at the world very differently than pretty much all of Hollywood.

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I love every second of Thin Red Line. Malick nailed it.I will never understand how people hate on it.

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Simple the movie is not an accurate portrayal of WW II combat especially on Guadalcanal. It is artsy and pretentious. I understand how those that love cinema can appreciate the cinematography or the psychological aspects. I prefer my war films to not frick around with scenes of tigers stalking jungles and guys chilling with natives. I mean my good they make the Japanese soldiers look like wimps, crying and surrendering on that hill while the mean Americans knock their teeth out for the gold. The Japanese were tough as hell and in 1942 were not surrendering in droves crying to the GI's.