Thin Red Line

Pros: Photography, Penn, Nolte, Cusack
Cons: Direction, Script, supporting cast

As a travelogue, The Thin Red Line would be a success. Who wouldn’t want to see the jungles of New Guinea or Guadalcanal up close and personal? However, as a film with a story to tell, the movie was a bomb.

I bought the video tape,...

Pros: Malick's Direction/Script, Cast, Toll's Cinematography, Score, Locations, Tone, Editing, Sound, & Everything.
Cons: Malick's Interpretive Approach & What Got Cut from the Final Version.

Since the dawn of cinema, war movies have been a wonderful medium to tell stories of courage and conflict. By World War II, war had a sense of honor yet there were those who disagreed with it. Especially by the time the Vietnam War hit. With war still ...

Pros: Mostly believable, not a badly accurate depiction of war and the military
Cons: LONG, I got out of the military for a reason!!!

All right. Lou Ferrigno, Phil Donahue, Bob Saget, and Joe Smith charge the bunker. One of them die. Which one do you think it happens to? (yeah yeah maybe you have your own PERSONAL choice here but...) Anyhow, in the original Star Trek, the choice...

Pros: Almost everything is note perfect.
Cons: The length and the abstractness may turn off many.

If you've ever read the novel The Thin Red Line, you have an abstract and clinical view of the proceedings of the invasion of Guadalcanal against the Japanese during World War II. But a book, unlike a movie, can really only give you a clinical view ...

Pros: Too many to list; please see below
Cons: None

As a film critic, my schedule is often pushed to the point of overload with the sheer quantity of movies that I'm called upon to see each month. Pen in hand, I approach each of them as a lion might stalk its prey: analyzing, looking for weakness. Try...

Pros: cinematography, direction, script, cast
Cons: many people will find it slow and fragmented

During the 1970s, Terrence Malick made two highly regarded, exquisitely photographed films. He then went into hiding in Austin, Texas, becoming perhaps the most famed film recluse since Greta Garbo. Twenty years after his masterpiece Days of...

Pros: Good thing it wasn't much longer...
Cons: Too many parts and accessories...

It's a shame that director Terrence Malick didn't do enough homework before filming this one, or he would've seen just about everything he did as endless rehash and tired old retread. With the cast he had at his disposal, the flick is more painful to...

Pros: The cast, the cinematography, and the war sequences
Cons: The editing, the character stories, and cast of mostly walk-on roles

When I read a story by Entertainment Weekly, about "The Thin Red Line", I was intrigued. I mean, it was covering a war story with an impressive cast, with all these A-list actors signing on. Cinescape said about the cast of "The Thin Red Line", was a ...

Pros: The tape didn't get jammed in my VCR so I was able to get it out of the house fast!
Cons: Dull, annoying inner monologue and flashbacks. No plot, another attempt to create a profound film ends in tragedy for the viewer.

When I saw the video of The Thin Red Line a few weeks ago I picked it up and was quite pleased. The cast was very good and it had "Winner of X number of academy awards" scrawled impressively over the cover. I love war films so I...

Pros: camera work, concept, Sean Penn, battle scenes
Cons: flashbacks, inner monologues, camera constantly being distracted by wildlife

¶Not long ago I saw a little movie named "Black Hawk Down", maybe you've heard of it. Anyway, it reminded me of another little movie, "Saving Private Ryan", maybe you've heard of that one too. Regardless, I got into my "War Movie Mode". I searched...

Pros: The earnest performances of Sean Penn and John Cusack.
Cons: Tries too hard to be artsy-fartsy and horrifying at once. Just doesn't click.

What lured me into buying a copy of "Thin Red Line" without seeing it first? Stupidity? Perhaps? The "Oscar Buzz" surrounding the movie? Maybe a little. Or was it a deadly combination of my love for war films and a $50 gift certificate to Best Buy?...

Pros: great scenery a few good characters
Cons: Melodramatic, boring, and goes absolutely nowhere

I had to see this movie just to make my own judgment of it. My brothers took my father to see it and all three said it was the worst piece of garbage they'd ever seen. Well, I know my tastes are quite different from theirs, so it was something I had to...

Pros: Cinematography, Nick Nolte's performance
Cons: "Special Guest Star" approach to casting

Why do most people who’ve seen both insist on deciding which of 1998’s WWII pictures they prefer: Saving Private Ryan or The Thin Red Line? It’s an apples-versus-oranges competition. The Thin Red Line’s Guadalcanal setting immediately distinguishes the...

Pros: Great cinematography, realistic portrayal of combat
Cons: Lack of cohesive story, very "narrative", pacing problems

The Thin Red Line can't seem to make up its mind whether it wants to be an art movie, or a war movie. The cinematography is beautiful, but there really isn't much plot or battle to keep you interested for very long.

Based on James Jones'...

Pros: Magnificent cinematography and meditative musings
Cons: Emotionally detached, slow-paced, and condescending dialogue

Writer/director Terence Malick, known as the J.D. Salinger of the movies, is the near-mythic Harvard graduate, Rhodes Scholar, former journalist and philosophy professor who exiled himself from Hollywood's film industry after making...