The Thin Red Line | Kirk Acevedo, Penelope Allen | Turn on your brain--the movie's much better...

The Thin Red Line | Kirk Acevedo, Penelope Allen | Quite different angle on a war movie

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The Thin Red Line

	The Thin Red Line Kirk Acevedo, Penelope Allen 20th Century Fox, 2002 average customer review:based on 928 reviews view larger image
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Turn on your brain--the movie's much better when you do

I am amazed by how many people don't like this because it's "too long," "doesn't have enough action," or (I love this one) "it's soooo lame." One of the many redeeming aspects of this film is how the movie does not force feed you. It doesn't barrage you with speeches, action, dramatic music, more action, action with dramatic music, and yet more hyperbolic action/music--doing all the thinking for you. If you have a short attention span, or are uncomfortable interpreting for yourself what you are watching, this movie is not for you. Go watch Saving Private Ryan, Patton, Guns of Navarone, anything but this. But if you want lucid cinematography, deep internal monologue, and spoken lines beyond "Let's get them Japs," and time to digest what you are watching, then get this movie.

It is the only war movie I would say is beautiful. There's no didactive hawk/dove preaching, chest thumping or flag waving, rather a complex portrayal of regular people, just like us, thrust into a hellish situation, and what goes on in their minds as they endure the everyday brutality of warfare.

Like a good poem that may only contain a couple dozen words, many lines and ideas in this movie demand you sit and think, to concentrate very very hard--to try to get to the marrow of the deeper meaning--something that takes lots of introspection and time.

For the people who were looking at their watches, or complaining it was too long, here's a hint: during the long sequences of silence or "inaction," there's a reason for it: something pithy has just ben served to you, or is about to be. If you still don't get it, go ahead and one-star this movie, and go get any of those other sugar-coated cookie cutter war movies that don't want you to do much thinking.

This is the best war movie I have seen.

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Quite different angle on a war movie

I watched this movie late in the evening, after coming home from my son's 14th birthday party. My festive mood quickly turned responsive and contemplative. My son watched part of it too but fell asleep due to exhaustion. Thin Red Line is a fascinating view on a dark and cruel chapter of WWII, the bitter, relentless fight over Guadalcanal in the Pacific theater of war. What struck me most about this film is the fact that man's conflict is set against the overwhelming background of nature and the elements. Although the fighting is intense and without mercy, nature is in large part undisturbed by it and uninterested in the outcome. The fighting scenes are intersparsed by scenes of tranquility and peacefulness. American GI's and Japanses Imperial troops are both depicted as accidental heroes and victims. There are exiting vistas and images of nature, animals, sunsets and sundowns, clouds and the omnipresent jungle. You hear the rustling of the wind in the grass and the trees. Like it must have been for the soldiers most of the time. Although there are parallels with Saving Private Ryan, it is an altogether different approach. The acting is great. Especially Jim Caviezel's and Sean Penn's. The actors doing a cameo (John Travolta, Nick Nolte)in my view are far less convincing.
I recommend this movie to anyone who is bored by the average run of the mill war flick with brainless heroes who rampage through the movie shooting everything that moves without being hit or hampered by remorse. Mr Terence Malick did an excellent job. I look forward to his next movie, whatever that may be. An intelligent, philosophical and artful anti war-movie depicting the cruelty of man and the senselessness of human conflict in all its degrading details. I was truly impressed by it.

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GUADALCANAL

My uncle was at Guadalcanal as a very young Marine. He was no square. His account was very close to the tenor of this film. I am sorry for those who did not feel adequately entertained. His company were reduced from 100 to 5. The art of this film is the inference of violence vs the explicit incidence. Inference is a more powerful tool in explaining the terror of real violence. I think violence is entertaining mainly to those who have never experienced it.
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Bought for husband, he loves it

I don't like movies about war and death but my husband does and he loves this movie and has watched it several times since I bought it.

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