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The Thin Red Line (1998)

tomatometer

78

Average Rating: 7.2/10
Reviews Counted: 88
Fresh: 69 | Rotten: 19

This is a complex but powerful work with high intensity.

92

Average Rating: 7.5/10
Critic Reviews: 25
Fresh: 23 | Rotten: 2

This is a complex but powerful work with high intensity.

audience

75

liked it
Average Rating: 3.4/5
User Ratings: 130,880

My Rating

Movie Info

The return of director Terrence Malick to feature filmmaking after a twenty year sabbatical, this World War II drama is an elegiac rumination on man's destruction of nature and himself, based on James Jones' semi-autobiographical novel, his follow-up to From Here to Eternity. James Caviezel stars as Private Witt, a deserter living in peace and harmony with the natives of a Pacific island paradise. Captured by the Navy, Witt is debriefed by a senior officer (Sean Penn) and returned to an active

R,

Drama, Action & Adventure

Terrence Malick

Nov 2, 1999

20th Century Fox - Official Site External Icon

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All Critics (111) | Top Critics (30) | Fresh (74) | Rotten (21) | DVD (38)

It's a genuinely epic ciné-poem that essentially sidesteps history, politics and conventional ethics to deal with war as an absolute, inevitable and eternal facet of existence.

February 9, 2006 Full Review Source: Time Out
Time Out
Top Critic IconTop Critic

At two hours and 45 minutes, The Thin Red Line gives ample evidence of suffering all manner of cuts, if not having been simply hacked into its final shape. But this violence only adds to the movie's brave, strange, eroded nobility.

January 1, 2000 Full Review Source: Village Voice
Village Voice
Top Critic IconTop Critic

A complex, highly talented work marked by intellectual and philosophical ambitions!

January 1, 2000 Full Review Source: Variety
Variety
Top Critic IconTop Critic

Lyrical, meditative and original, Malick's WWII film is one of the best war films ever made.

May 6, 2012 Full Review Source: EmanuelLevy.Com
EmanuelLevy.Com

Though it is not only a great war film, perhaps not even primarily a great war film, it is assuredly a great war film.

June 8, 2011 Full Review Source: Antagony & Ecstasy
Antagony & Ecstasy

...so gorgeous it feels as if it's being seen through heavenly eyes - at least until fresh hell rips across the screen.

May 13, 2011 Full Review Source: LarsenOnFilm
LarsenOnFilm

Ultimately concerned less with specific tactical maneuvers or combat suffering than with the grand contradictions of life.

May 11, 2011 Full Review Source: Lessons of Darkness
Lessons of Darkness

The Thin Red Line's hallucinatory blend of images defines the very essence of cinema.

April 20, 2011 Full Review Source: Slant Magazine
Slant Magazine

Director Terrence Malick recommends that The Thin Red Line be played loud.

September 28, 2010 Full Review Source: Slant Magazine
Slant Magazine

... one of the richest and lushest films ever to emerge from Hollywood.

April 30, 2007 Full Review Source: Seattle Weekly
Seattle Weekly

The Thin Red Line would have been infinitely more successful without the frequent rest-stops full of mental malaise and philosophical pretense.

June 27, 2005 Full Review Source: DVDTalk.com | Comments (4)
DVDTalk.com

It makes you think and ask questions. Its characters contradict themselves, talking one way, acting another. And it ends abruptly, with many things unresolved. Like life.

January 15, 2005 Full Review Source: Looking Closer | Comment (1)
Looking Closer

Audience Reviews for The Thin Red Line

Hypnotic and epic film about nature, human and war. Terrence Malick has always been slightly overpraised as a director in my opinion. He is far too concerned about creating beautiful images than telling something worthwile. The Thin Red Line still comes close in creating something equally important as it is horribly beautiful.
It would be wrong to say that this is a film purely about war. It is more a film about human in conflict with himself. There are times when Malick's heavy use of monlogues feel pretentious and even a bit ridicilous, but when it come in staging a horrors of war he truly nails it. Some of the images from the fog filled jungle mixed with the Hans Zimmer's amazing score makes this one nearly a dreamlike experience. Something closer to a nightmare possibly.
It does have too many underwritten characters, too many sideplots and sometimes it all feels awfully unfocused when it comes to screenplay. Still this is Malick at his best. The Thin Red Line is his best work to date. Flawed it may be, but it holds your attention with it's hypnotic atmosphere.
June 20, 2011
emilkakko

Super Reviewer

The WWll Battle of Guadalcanal is merely a backdrop for a look at the nature of men at a time when true nature purportedly reveals itself. Elegantly sublime and respectful, her beautiful imagery shocking because of what it takes to make us see it: somebody's got to die. There are no real "stars" here either, only moments all too briefly passed with faces we only begin to glimpse and then they're gone, all of us on a scary ride to who knows where.
September 8, 2007
UniversalDreamer

Super Reviewer

    1. Pvt. Bell: We... We together. One being. Flow together like water. Till I can't tell you from me. I drink you. Now... Now.
    – Submitted by Ben P (6 months ago)
    1. Pvt. Bell: My dear wife. You get something twisted out of your insides by all this blood, filth and noise. I want to stay changeless for you. I want to come back to you the man I was before. How do we get to those other shores? To those blue hills? Love--where does it come from? Who lit this flame in us? No war can put it out, conquer it. I was a prisoner. You set me free.
    – Submitted by Ben P (6 months ago)
    1. Lt. Col. Gordon Tall: All the sacrificed for me... Poured out like water on the ground. All I might have given for love's sake; too late. Dying. Slow as a tree.
    – Submitted by Josh R (16 months ago)
    1. Pvt. Witt: I remember mother when she was dyin'; all shrunk up and grey. I asked her if she was afraid... she just shook her head. I was afraid to touch the death I seen in her. I couldn't find nothin' beautiful or upliftin' about her goin' back to God. I heard people talk about immortality... But I ain't seen it. I wondered how it'd be when I died. What it'd be like to know that this breath now was the last one you was ever gonna draw... I just hope that I can meet it the same way she did. With the same... calm. Cause that's where it's hidden -- the immortality I hadn't seen.
    – Submitted by Josh R (16 months ago)
    1. Pvt. Witt: Are you righteous? Kind? Does your confidence lie in this? Are you loved by all? Know that I was, too. Do you imagine your sufferings will be less because you loved goodness? Truth?
    – Submitted by Jim B (19 months ago)
    1. Pvt. Witt: One man looks at a dying bird and thinks there's nothing but unanswered pain, that death's got the final word, it's laughing at him. Another man sees that same bird, feels the glory, feels something smiling through it.
    – Submitted by James W (21 months ago)

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Latest News on The Thin Red Line

August 13, 2010:
Ben Affleck and Rachel Weisz Join Malick's Latest
Ben Affleck and Rachel Weisz have joined the cast of Terrence Malick's next film, described as "a...

Foreign Titles

  • Der schmale Grat (DE)
  • La Ligne rouge (FR)
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