The Thin Red Line Review
by Christian Pyle (tlcclp AT aol DOT com)February 10th, 1999
The Thin Red Line (1998)
a review by Christian Pyle
The television ads for "The Thin Red Line" promise "images you'll never be able to shake." Thankfully, that blurb is hyperbole (psychological scars are not something I'm looking for in a movie experience), but the line from the ads suggests a collection of powerful fragments, which is what "Red Line" offers.
"The Thin Red Line," based on a novel by James Jones, marks the return of writer/director Terrence Malick after a twenty-year absence. Malick's previous works as a director-"Badlands" (1973) and "Days of Heaven" (1978)-still garner the praise of critics. Several Hollywood stars (including George Clooney, John Travolta, Woody Harrelson, and John Cusack) took small roles in "Red Line" just for the opportunity of working with Malick.
The movie is about the effort to drive the Japanese out of Guadalcanal in World War II. It's an ensemble piece with a variety of characters, each dealing with the horrors of war in his own way. There's no clear protagonist or linear plot development, but these may not be faults-war doesn't have a protagonist or a plot. Malick explores the psychological and philosophical aspects of war, the latter in voice-overs in which various characters muse about the meaning of it all.
There is brilliance in this movie-powerful images, intense performances, thought-provoking confrontations-but the accumulation of beautifully-crafted fragments never melts together into a coherent whole. This lack of cohesion is probably due to contradictory desires for what the movie should express. The desire to represent the scope of war by painting a large canvas competes with the desire to explore the psychologies of individual characters in depth. The viewer has trouble remembering who's who, and the size of the roster leaves little time, even in a three-hour movie, to develop the characters clearly. The desire to pose philosophical questions raised by war competes with the desire to capture the intensity of combat. The voice-overs suggest a lyrical repose where characters can muse on the why's of war, but the characters live in constant danger.
So, we are left with a pile of fine pieces. "Red Line" begins with deserter Pvt. Witt (Jim Caviezel) enjoying a separate peace with island natives whose simple lives centered around family and community contrast with the war. Later, pulled back into the war, Witt wanders through another native village and sees a collection of human skulls. The war in these Pacific islands is a siege of paradise. The scenery the soldiers plod through is breathtakingly beautiful and tranquil, a powerful contrast to the machinery of war.
Many of the most dramatic moments occur as Charlie Company crawls up a grassy hill to attack the Japanese machine gun nest hidden above. The camera gives us a soldier's perspective, crouching in the mud, unable to see through the surrounding grass. Explosions burst nearby, appearing suddenly and seemingly at random. Machine-gun fire crackles ahead. Malick draws us into the terror of war for soldiers who are like us, ordinary Joes plucked out of their ordinary peacetime lives.
Their leaders, too, are unused to combat. Halfway up the hill, Capt. Staros (Elias Koteas), a lawyer in civilian life, refuses to advance for fear that his men will all be slaughtered. Staros' refusal draws his commander, Col. Tall (Nick Nolte), closer to the fray. Tall is an aging West Point graduate who's been passed over for promotion. This is his first war, and he is eager to prove himself. The two men play off of each other-Staros, unwilling to sacrifice any man's life no matter how important the objective; Tall, can see only the objective and is puzzled by the concern that Staros and Capt. Gaff (John Cusack) have for their men.
The conflict between Tall and his captains is parallel to a conflict between Sgt. Welsh (Sean Penn) and Witt. Penn gives the most compelling and complex performance of the movie, and Welsh is a fascinating mixture of cynicism and heroism. Other performances are considerably weaker, particularly the cameos by Clooney and Travolta.
Grade: B
© 1999 Christian L. Pyle
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