The Thin Red Line (1998)

All Critics (109) | Top Critics (29) | Fresh (74) | Rotten (21) | DVD (37)

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

January 1, 2000 Full Review | Comment

Todd McCarthy

Variety

Top Critic

Intermittently brilliant!

January 1, 2000 Full Review | Comment

Janet Maslin

New York Times

Top Critic

A highly original piece of motion picture artistry!

January 1, 2000 Full Review | Comments (2)

James Berardinelli

ReelViews

Top Critic

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

May 6, 2012 Full Review | Comment

Emanuel Levy

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 | Comment

Tim Brayton

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 | Comment

Josh Larsen

LarsenOnFilm

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

May 11, 2011 Full Review | Comment

Nick Schager

Lessons of Darkness

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

April 20, 2011 Full Review | Comment

Rob Humanick

Slant Magazine

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

September 28, 2010 Full Review | Comment

Rob Humanick

Slant Magazine

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

April 30, 2007 Full Review | Comment

Sean Axmaker

Seattle Weekly

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 | Comment

Geoff Andrew

Time Out

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 | Comments (3)

Scott Weinberg

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 | Comment (1)

Jeffrey Overstreet

Looking Closer

Won't be a commercial hit, but it will rank at the top of my list of best movies of 1998.

June 28, 2004 Full Review | Comment

Judith Egerton

Courier-Journal (Louisville, KY)

• 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 (3 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 (3 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 (6 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 (9 months ago)
• 1. Pvt. Witt: Do you ever feel lonely?
  2. First Sgt. Edward Welsh: Only around people.
  – Submitted by Alexandar T (10 months ago)