The Thin Red Line (1998)
Average Rating: 7.2/10
Reviews Counted: 88
Fresh: 69 | Rotten: 19
The Thin Red Line is a daringly philosophical World War II film with an enormous cast of eager stars.
Average Rating: 7.5/10
Critic Reviews: 25
Fresh: 23 | Rotten: 2
The Thin Red Line is a daringly philosophical World War II film with an enormous cast of eager stars.
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Average Rating: 3.5/5
User Ratings: 145,702
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
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Cast
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Sean Penn
First Sgt. Edward We... -
Adrien Brody
Cpl. Fife -
Jim Caviezel
Pvt. Witt -
Ben Chaplin
Pvt. Bell -
George Clooney
Capt. Charles Bosche -
John Cusack
Capt. John Gaff -
Woody Harrelson
Sgt. Keck -
Elias Koteas
Capt. James "Bugger"... -
Jared Leto
Second Lt. Whyte -
Dash Mihok
Pfc. Doll -
Tim Blake Nelson
Pvt. Tills -
Nick Nolte
Lt. Col. Gordon Tall -
John C. Reilly
Sgt. Storm -
Larry Romano
Pvt. Mazzi -
John Savage
Sgt. McCron -
John Travolta
Brig. Gen. Quintard -
Arie Verveen
Pfc. Dale -
David Harrod
Cpl. Queen -
Thomas Jane
Pvt. Ash -
Polyn Leona
Melanesian Woman wit... -
Miranda Otto
Marty Bell -
Matt Doran
Private Coombs -
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All Critics (111) | Top Critics (30) | Fresh (69) | Rotten (19) | 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.
Top CriticAt 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.
Fascinating!
Lyrical, meditative and original, Malick's WWII film is one of the best war films ever made.
Though it is not only a great war film, perhaps not even primarily a great war film, it is assuredly a great war film.
...so gorgeous it feels as if it's being seen through heavenly eyes - at least until fresh hell rips across the screen.
Ultimately concerned less with specific tactical maneuvers or combat suffering than with the grand contradictions of life.
The Thin Red Line's hallucinatory blend of images defines the very essence of cinema.
... one of the richest and lushest films ever to emerge from Hollywood.
The Thin Red Line would have been infinitely more successful without the frequent rest-stops full of mental malaise and philosophical pretense.
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.
Won't be a commercial hit, but it will rank at the top of my list of best movies of 1998.
Malick transforms James Jones' two-fisted prose into visual poetry.
...a film of sublime power and beautiful tedium.
A frustrating return to the screen of one of American film's most distinctive and challenging geniuses.
The visionary quality of the film and the exotic cinematography of John Toll make this a most impressive and unusual work of art.
Perhaps the movie's final, lasting image embraces all we know: From the mud grows the lotus.
far more interested in juxtaposing the beauty of nature untamed and the harsh destruction of mankind at war than ... telling a story or developing characters
An intensely internalized portrait of external pandemonium, a slippery, insidiously haunting work of poetry!
Audience Reviews for The Thin Red Line
Super Reviewer
Fine performances abound, and I found Nick Nolte's Colonel Tall to be an awesome portrayal.
14 years have passed with this film, and I found it fun to see all the actors who just "show up" in cameo roles, like John Travolta and George Clooney.
My only real complaints about this film have to do with pacing and length. At 3 hours, there certainly was ample opportunity for some judicious editing (many a scene, especially the flashbacks and more surreal material, could have been shortened) - which would have given a tighter narrative; but even that wouldn't have covered the big "breather" that the film takes about 3/4 of the way through. After the hill is taken and Charly Co returns to base camp, the film loses all momentum dealing with the aftermath of the campaign, which makes the then repositioning of the company up river under new and incompetent command, seem a superflous tag - a feeling compounded by the sacrifice made by the film's narrator and "soul". Better if the film would have left out this portion of the film entirely and cut to the company leaving Guadacanal on the LCV.
Yet, in spite of these obvious missteps, the film is compelling, and its ruminations on the origin of evil and mankind's loss of harmony make this film a must see.
Super Reviewer
Movies Like The Thin Red Line
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- Pvt. Bell: We... We together. One being. Flow together like water. Till I can't tell you from me. I drink you. Now... Now.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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?
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- 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.
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Foreign Titles
- Der schmale Grat (DE)
- La Ligne rouge (FR)
