The Thin Red Line Review
by Scott Renshaw (renshaw AT inconnect DOT com)January 14th, 1999
THE THIN RED LINE
(20th Century Fox)
Starring: Sean Penn, Ben Chaplin, Jim Caviezel, Arie Verveen, Elias Koteas, Nick Nolte, Woody Harrelson, Dash Mihok, Adrien Brody. Screenplay: Terrence Malick, based on the novel by James Jones. Producers: Robert Michael Geisler & John Roberdeau and Grant Hill. Director: Terrence Malick.
MPAA Rating: R (violence, profanity, brief nudity, adult themes) Running Time: 168 minutes.
Reviewed by Scott Renshaw.
The announcement that THE THIN RED LINE would mark Terrence Malick's return to the director's chair after a twenty year absence was greeted as the cinematic equivalent of J. D. Salinger popping open his Smith-Corona to give it another go. This was, after all, the hermit-genius of Great American Movie-Making, whose only two previous films -- BADLANDS and DAYS OF HEAVEN -- were spoken of in tones of reverence. Yet try as I might, I couldn't work up the same enthusiasm. As adept as Malick was at crafting stunning visuals, narrative seemed to be an afterthought to him, something to be cobbled together with voice-over narration. Good films, yes, and profoundly beautiful ones, but not profound ones.
Malick reaches for profundity once again in THE THIN RED LINE; the result is another good, great-looking tone poem where deep thoughts stand in the way of genuine drama. Based on James Jones' 1962 novel, it tells the tale of the 1942-43 World War II Guadalcanal campaign through the eyes of several members of a U.S. Army rifle company called C-for-Charlie. Malick weaves his way through the minds and eyes of several characters as C-for-Charlie prepares for its first action, including: company commander Capt. Staros (Elias Koteas), an officer concerned about his men; Lt. Col. Tall (Nick Nolte), the batallion commander who sees this campaign as a career-making opportunity; Pvt. Witt (Jim Caviezel), an idealist who repeatedly goes AWOL; Sgt. Welsh (Sean Penn), whose cynicism hides a heart; and Pvt. Bell (Ben Chaplin), whose every thought is focused on his wife back home.
It's instantly clear that Malick intends to take THE THIN RED LINE in a very different direction from Jones' novel. Jones, while he frequently found his way into the heads of his characters, was equally concerned with providing a vivid sense of the physical -- the oppressive heat and humidity, the boots full of water, and the insect attacks that challenged the men on Guadalcanal before a single shot was fired. For long stretches of THE THIN RED LINE, Malick seems to forget that these characters have bodies at all. The narration captures the men thinking about God, about the nature of evil, about their lives and loves. The incessant koan-like philosophizing becomes aggravating enough, but it's even more frustrating that every one of the men, from the law school-educated Staros to Kentucky-bred farm boy Witt, thinks in the same college-sophomore-on-a- double-bong-hit, my-fingernail-could-be-a-whole-nother-universe terms. With only a couple of notable exceptions -- Bell's obsessive love for his wife, and Tall's careerist self-loathing -- Malick's internal monologues turn the characters into an indistinct jumble of existential angst.
Ironically, THE THIN RED LINE is at its best when it does get down and dirty, following the company's assault on a well-defended Japanese hill position. It's a superb piece of kinetic war film-making, the camera bursting through tall grass as soldiers are cut down during a suicidal head-on attack. It is here, during the heat of battle, that Malick finds his most affecting and insightful moments: a platoon sergeant (Woody Harrelson) facing a greater threat from his own carelessness than from the enemy; Doll reacting to his first kill; Staros and Tall facing off over a risky attack order. There's more poetry and insight as the men discover what battle will make of them than there is in an hour's worth of navel-gazing and heavy-handed juxtapositions of war ("bad") and nature ("good").
There's little question that THE THIN RED LINE is an aesthetic wonder, shot by John Toll in fickle available light and edited into a wartime KOYAANISQATSI. And it all might have worked much better if Malick had let viewers draw their own messages from the images, rather than letting a soldier inform us that "war don't ennoble men...it turns 'em into dogs, poisons the soul." Even that tactic might have worked better if the voices had been distinctive, or if there were some exploration of esprit de corps which connected these men to one another. Each character in THE THIN RED LINE is living too squarely inside his own head to connect much with anyone else. That sentiment applies to Terrence Malick as well, who returns from his two decade sabbatical for three hours of stunningly photographed, overwrought introspection.
On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 flat lines: 6.
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