The Thin Red Line (1998): In World War II, the outcome of the battle of Guadalcanal will strongly influence the Japanese advance into the Pacific theater. A group of young soldiers is brought in as a relief for the battle-weary Marines. (7.5)
Director: Terrence Malick
Writers: James Jones (novel), Terrence Malick (screenplay)
Stars: Jim Caviezel, Sean Penn and Nick Nolte
To me, this story is about the horrors of war presented as a free-flow stream of fragments about various characters in the group. I was mostly fascinated by the deaths all around and various people's reactions to facing death. The lack of a strong coherent storyline kept me fading in and out my own ideas of tactics of war and why I would embrace the death in each and every scenario. Having seen Malick's other free-form movie "A Tree of Life" I can say that I'm not a big fan of that style. If he really wanted to present the "war is hell" idea in that perspective, he could have, should have, used both sides of the conflict for the purpose. In this movie, however, the Japanese soldiers are still the enemy. Are they not soldiers like the friendlies, with the same hopes and dreams and fears? Yeah, I can see why this is a different kind of a war movie, but I'm not overly impressed by the storytelling (or lack-thereof). My Rating: 7.0
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