The Thin Red LineThe Thin Red Line
starring: Kirk Acevedo, Penelope Allen, Benjamin Green, Simon Billig, Mark Boone Junior directed by: Terrence Malick See similar products Read customer reviews Related Items:
Audience Rating: R (Restricted) Binding: VHS Tape EAN: 4010232000118 Format: PAL Languages: Theatrical Release Date: January 08, 1999
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Editorial Review: Amazon.com essential video: One of the cinema's great disappearing acts came to a close with the release of The Thin Red Line in late 1998. Terrence Malick, the cryptic recluse who withdrew from Hollywood visibility after the release of his visually enthralling masterpiece Days of Heaven (1978), returned to the director's chair after a 20-year coffee break. Malick's comeback vehicle is a fascinating choice: a wide-ranging adaptation of a World War II novel (filmed once before, in 1964) by James Jones. The battle for Guadalcanal Island gives Malick an opportunity to explore nothing less than the nature of life, death, God, and courage. Let that be a warning to anyone expecting a conventional war flick; Malick proves himself quite capable of mounting an exciting action sequence, but he's just as likely to meander into pure philosophical noodling--or simply let the camera contemplate the first steps of a newly birthed tropical bird, the sinister skulk of a crocodile. This is not especially an actors' movie--some faces go by so quickly they barely register--but the standouts are bold: Nick Nolte as a career-minded colonel, Elias Koteas as a deeply spiritual captain who tries to protect his men, Ben Chaplin as a G.I. haunted by lyrical memories of his wife. The backbone of the film is the ongoing discussion between a wry sergeant (Sean Penn) and an ethereal, almost holy private (newcomer Jim Caviezel). The picture's sprawl may be a result of Malick's method of "finding" a film during shooting and editing, and in some ways The Thin Red Line seems vaguely, intriguingly incomplete. Yet it casts a spell like almost nothing else of its time, and Malick's visionary images are a challenge and a signpost to the rest of his filmmaking generation. --Robert Horton Amazon.com: This serious-minded but flawed effort at bringing James Jones's later World War II novel to the screen might have languished in film vaults had reclusive director Terence Malick not resurfaced with a newer version, the likely spur to this video release. This first attempt, lensed in 1964, offers glimpses of what may have attracted Malick to the project. Jones's story focuses on two American soldiers during the Guadalcanal campaign, the newlywed draftee Private Doll (Keir Dullea) and Sergeant Welch (Jack Warden), the hardened veteran. Doll is determined to survive whatever the cost, disobeying orders if it will improve his chances; Welch is dutiful yet calculating, resorting to deliberate acts of madness to toughen up his troops by showing them war's own absurdity by example. The clash between the private and the sergeant thus becomes the core to the film, focusing on the "thin red line" between sanity and insanity and depicting how that line blurs for both protagonists. As directed by veteran Andrew Marton (55 Days in Peking), the film is at its best during sweeping battle sequences capturing the gritty horror of hand-to-hand combat, as the Americans try to take an impregnable wall of caves held by the Japanese enemy. Less successful are portentous scenes and dialogue that underscore this evident parable with a heavy hand; there's a self-conscious art film spin that misfires.The original black-and-white Cinemascope negative shows wear and tear, and early copies betray serious problems in their optical transfers. --Sam Sutherland Customer Reviews Average Rating: 
Rating:  - Stink, stank, stunkThe thing that made "The Thin Red Line" a flawed war movie for me was the way some of the characters were cast and/or filmed in a way that made them undistinguishable from each other. They were supposed to be guys you could follow, but looked so ... Read More Rating:  - A beautiful filmThis film in my opinion is an epic combination of sight, sound, and performance. Nick Nolte's role was Oscar worthy. It is the most powerful, gutteral, desperate, portrayal of a combat commander ever filmed. There is no fluff, no contrived dialogue, ... Read More Rating:  - Crossing the LineMalik's epic anti-war treatise is less effective on repeat and its pitch at the sublime is best savoured on big-screen theatre darkness to work its magic. Much of the necessary swatches of sky through tree canopy, macro nature, and shifting light over sussurating ... Read More Rating: - So listlessly boring, I remember almost nothingI saw this movie in theaters when it first came out. I was a child, then, 10 or 11 years old. Maybe I should have been set up to be bored, but even looking back on it now, ten years later, I find myself justified in claiming it boring. Even as a child, ... Read More Rating: - "Thin Red Line" or "Thin Plot Line"I am shocked by the number of glowing reviews this movie received - I saw it on opening day in a theater crowded with active duty military troops (I am a retired vet), and most got up and walked out by the half-way point! And I wish I had walked out too! Having 14 months+ ... Read More see more Browse for similar items by category: Click to Display Related Items:
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The Thin Red Line
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