re: Why doesn't the Thin Red Line get more respect?

The Thin Red Line gets plenty of respect from directors and film critics. Martin Scorsese ranked it as the best film from the '90s. Christopher Nolan has The Thin Red Line ranked in his personal top 10 saying that he came up with the nonlinear plot from Memento after watching that film. You can clearly see of the work on Dunkirk as well. Fernando Meirelles (City of God) and Jean-Marc Vallee (Dallas Buyers Club, Big Little Lies) also have ranked in their personal top 10. There's a website called "They Shoot Pictures Don't They" that ranks the top 1000 films of all-time based on nearly 10000 lists from critics and filmmakers. The Thin Red Line ranks 196th all-time and is the third highest ranked English language film from the '90s only behind Goodfellas and Pulp Fiction. OTOH, Saving Private Ryan is ranked at #723 and was actually out of the top 1000 until their most recent update this year.