The Thin Red Line Review
by "Jason Wallis" (rwallis AT inreach DOT com)February 3rd, 1999
The Thin Red Line (1998)
Rating (out of five): *****
Starring Sean Penn, Elias Koteas, Nick Nolte, Ben Chaplin, John Cusack, Woody Harrelson, John C. Reilly,
Adrien Brody, Jared Leto, George Clooney and John Travolta Directed by Terrence Malick
Rated R for graphic violence and profanity
Theatrical aspect ratio of 2.35:1
Released in 1998
Running 170 minutes
Why, oh why couldn't have they have held the release of The Thin Red Line just one month longer? In a year that boasted the most successful and realistic war film ever (Saving Private Ryan, in case you've been pulling a Salinger for the past six months or so), the last thing you'd want to do is release a poetic and surrealistic mediation on the war inside the human soul. With the Private Ryan hype still in full swing, America just isn't ready for that kind of ambiguity. Already drawing unfavorable comparisons to Spielberg's film, American maverick Terrence Malick's return to the cinema is all but doomed.
And it really deserves better. I'm fully prepared to be shunned by the world of film criticism for saying this, but I firmly believe that The Thin Red Line offers a much more potent experience than Ryan. Spielberg's version of the last great war took you inside physical battle like few films before it ever have, but Malick's film is so haunting and lyrical in it's delivery and imagery that, yes, I would compare it to Apocalypse Now. Quite an analogy, I know, but it's the honest to God truth. More symbolic than Full Metal Jacket and even more philosophical than Oliver Stone's Platoon, it is very possibly the finest war film of the last twenty years.
With it's first image of a crocodile slithering beneath the murk of a swamp, symbolizing the violence and terror waiting just under the surface of the human soul, this one doesn't burst to the screen with vivid intensity like most battle films do. Rather, Malick chooses to establish an overall ascetic tone and mood to the film before he confronts you with his brutal and at times uncompromising and blood-soaked engagements of violence.
Actually, the movie at first feels more like a Natural Geographic documentary than a war adventure. Presenting us with a view of nature undisturbed by man's inhumanity to man, the film treats us to a glimpse of native life, where a couple of AWOL U.S. troops have deserted to. After an American battleship returns to the island to claim it's soldiers, it whisks them off to yet another natural habitat just waiting to be disrupted, where the remainder of The Thin Red Line is to take place.
Here, the movie makes a sudden and, admittingly, welcome change of pace. While Private Ryan's assault on the beach lasted twenty five minutes, Malick goes into high-gear for no less than an hour and a half. This is where the movie really shines; the cinematography, sound and editing are all a spectacle to behold. But even though these ninety minutes provide ample amounts of blood, guts and octane, Malick still upholds a strange kind of dream-like beauty to what is going on. Much like it's obvious predecessor Apocalypse Now, it causes the viewer to go into a trance-like state. We realize the horror of what we are being subjected to, but it's just so beautiful that we can't tear our eyes from it for one moment.
Like all great films, The Thin Red Line does have it's share of flaws. Most obviously, it's not very accessible to the average movie-goer; Saving Private Ryan owed much of it's success to it's utter simplicity. I'm not saying that's necessarily a bad thing; I enjoy it when a film challenges me, but this one is so complex in it's ideas that it could very easily be seen as an exercise in pretension. I'll even admit that it took me two viewings to fully comprehend the full weight of the movie.
One thing that really got to me personally was the sudden appearances of John Travolta and George Clooney at the beginning and end of the story. Like the bookends of Private Ryan, they jerked me out of the rhythm of the movie. Kenneth Branagh made the same mistake with 1996's Hamlet when he cast such stars as Robin Williams, Jack Lemmon and Billy Crystal in two minute cameos. Casting major stars in bit parts disconnects you from the story just long enough to make you realize that you are watching a movie, and that can be a grave mistake at times.
By the end of the film, though, the good things have outweighed the bad about two million to one and make for one of the most memorable, unnerving and effective films of 1998.
Copyright 1999 Jason Wallis
*Homepage at http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Boulevard/7475
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