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In 1998, this overwrought, overlong, self-indulgent piece of crap was nominated for seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director. Some twenty years earlier, director Terrence Malick had the good fortune to churn out two good films, and in a rare instance of Hollywood's memory being longer than yesterday's box-office orgasm, Oscar's awe of this artistic achievement got the better of its judgment. But from the film's seven nominations, it won nothing. There is a God.
Thin Red Line is a moody, atmospheric story of an American military invasion of Guadalcanal during World War II. It boasts an expansive stellar cast, including Nick Nolte, John Travolta, Sean Penn, and Woody Harrelson. You'd think that much celebrity firepower should make the screen explode with the performance intensity of Brando's Streetcar � and yet Thin Red Line plays surprisingly flat.
Pretty much every war movie ever made features an all-male cast, since pretty much every war ever fought does, too. This doesn't leave a lot for the ladies, unless you're the type o' lady who knows the starting left tackle for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and thinks light beer is for sissies.
The script, performance and direction seem to have an underlying tension at all times, even though the movie's early torpid pace frequently allows a full minute to pass by between three or four muttered laconic syllables. An argument may be forwarded that real war is similarly expressed in interminable stretches of tense boredom punctuated by intermittent and often unexpected bursts of deadly intensity. But as a viewer, watching a bunch of sweaty guys sitting around with no dialogue and no action for the first hour is understandably tedious.
This would be the movie one could expect from a director with a barbiturates jones � until � until �
Well into the film, Charlie Company finally lands on the beach and begins their assault on a heavily-fortified hill. Suddenly their earlier tedium looks pretty damn good, as they face inconceivable terror, in inconceivable pain. Body parts and blood are everywhere, pandemonium controls their thoughts and their movements, and the testosterone-driven aggressive insanity of war replaces the torpor of their earlier journey.
Then, after the invasion, we're once again treated to lingering shots of birds in trees, bugs on blades of grass, frequent flashbacks of somebody's wife back in some Omaha or other, and pretentious badly-scripted random voice-over narrations.
Unfortunately, I didn't enjoy any part of Thin Red Line, though my dislike for the boredom sections was entirely different than my dislike for the gory sections. Director Malick's narcissistic desire to produce an overtly didactic Buddhist-influenced antiwar statement completely overshadows his better artistic instincts. If this is poetry, I'm Walt Whitman.
With its frequent changes of tone and substance, and its non-linear meandering storyline, I guess one can at least give Malick credit for making his version of Apocalypse Now an unequivocally unpleasant film.