Cast: Sean Penn, James Caviezel, Ben Chaplin, Elias Koteas, Nick Nolte, Adrien Brody, Jared Leto, Dash Mihok
Director: Terrence Malick
Producers: Robert Michael Geisler, Grant Hill, John Roberdeau
Screenplay: Terrence Malick based on the novel by James Jones
Cinematography: John Toll
Music: Hans Zimmer
U.S. Distributor: Twentieth Century Fox
A crocodile sliding beneath algae-covered water. A wounded baby bird in its death throes. Dogs feasting upon the remains of human carcasses. A silhouetted ship cruising against a bright background. Lush, rolling hills with tall grass stalks being bent by the prompting of the wind. Gentle streams burbling and babbling as they seek their source. Proud trees, viewed from below, straining to reach the sky while shrouding everything underneath them in a perpetual twilight. These are only some of the images offered up by Terrence Malick in The Thin Red Line, the director's much-anticipated return to film making after a 20 year absence. Anyone familiar with Malick's earlier work, especially Days of Heaven, will recognize his technique -- the director is a poet of images.
This is not the first time The Thin Red Line, based on James Jones' 1962 autobiographical novel about the World War II battle at Guadalcanal, has been adapted for the big screen. A 1964 film, made in black-and-white by director Andrew Marton, used the same source material. But Marton's version is so different from Malick's that it's almost as if they shared the title by coincidence. To call 1998's The Thin Red Line a remake is to do the movie and its creators a great injustice. Malick's movie is a highly original piece of motion picture artistry.
1998 could easily be considered the year that movies attempted to de-romanticize the World Wars. The Thin Red Line is the third film released in the last six months to look at the experience of battle as something less than the heroic struggle of a John Wayne film. First came Saving Private Ryan, which shocked audiences with its frank and unflinching portrayal of the carnage and moral ambiguity of war. Next was the lesser-known Regeneration, which depicted the devastating psychological effects of World War I's trench warfare. Now, The Thin Red Line completes the trilogy. Unlike Spielberg's Private Ryan, this movie does not intend to stun us with bloodsoaked images. Instead, Malick tries to project the abject terror that grips the hearts of all but suicidal soldiers at the thought of charging into a hail of enemy gunfire. Actually, the assault on the hill in The Thin Red Line reminded me more of Gettysburg's attack on Little Round Top than of Private Ryan's Omaha Beach debacle.
For two hours, The Thin Red Line is close to perfect. Unfortunately, the movie is almost three hours long, and, during its final third, it begins to unravel. And, while the pacing and content of the third hour are not the movie's only problems, they are the most conspicuous, and represent the factor that keeps this film from achieving the pinnacle reached by Private Ryan. Malick was reportedly still working in the editing room until well into the eleventh hour. Perhaps he was attempting to restore some sense of flow to this uneven final act. If so, it didn't work.
The Thin Red Line is basically the story of the Guadalcanal conflict as seen from the American side of the front line. There are five main characters and a host of secondary ones. The commanding officer is Lt. Col. Gordon Tall (Nick Nolte), who's involved in this battle for all the glory he can commandeer. To that end, he has no problem ordering scores of men to throw away their lives by attacking a seemingly-impregnable position. Captain James Staros (Elias Koteas), the commander of "C" Company who is known for his kindness to his men, refuses a direct order from Tall when he believes it's a suicide mission. Sgt. Edward Welsh (Sean Penn) has a reputation for being cold and hard, but, on the battlefield, he displays his humanity by risking his own life to get pain killers to a mortally wounded soldier. Private Witt (James Caviezel), despite nearly being courtmartialed for going AWOL, distinguishes himself in combat. And Private Bell (Ben Chaplin) performs acts of astounding bravery as his memories of his perfect marriage to a beautiful woman (Miranda Otto) fuel his desire to return home alive.
One of the things that The Thin Red Line does well is to illustrate the terror and chaos of war. The characters here aren't macho guys marching into a hail of bullets for the glory of the moment. They're scared men staring death in the face -- a death that waits concealed in the beauty of a grassy hill. You can see the panic in their eyes when violence shatters the serenity of the countryside. One man begins to vomit. Another quickly opens a locket to glance at a picture of his wife. There is valor in The Thin Red Line, but that's not the point of the film, and the characters who perform the great deeds don't feel like heroes. They're doing what's necessary to survive. And, as one character puts it, "War don't ennoble men. It turns them into dogs. It poisons the soul."
After the battle for the hill is over, Malick doesn't seem to know where to go with the movie. The final hour is a fragmentary narrative about random events that occur afterwards. It isn't compelling (except when it reveals the fate of certain characters) and there are times when it borders on being incoherent. A battle occurs towards the end of the film, but most of it apparently happens off screen. One moment, a massive force of Japanese troops is advancing; the next, it's all over and a commanding officer is addressing the survivors.
The casting is a mixture of brilliant choices and horrible mistakes. Fortunately, the former outnumber the latter. Ben Chaplin (The Truth about Cats and Dogs), James Caviezel (G.I. Jane), and Elias Koteas (Fallen) give strong, believable performances as the three soldiers with the most screen time. Sean Penn, currently stunning audiences with his powerhouse portrayal in Hurlyburly, is somewhat underused, but nevertheless effective. Nick Nolte, who can also be seen in Affliction, uses an interesting approach for the bombastic and self-centered Tall: he mimics George C. Scott's interpretation of Gen. George S. Patton (from Patton). Malick stumbles when it comes to the cameos, however. A few -- John Cusack and John C. Reilly, in particular -- fit in, but most are glaringly out-of-place. As soon as Woody Harrelson comes on screen, the audience is jerked out of the moment by a shock of star recognition. Ditto for John Travolta and George Clooney. Of the three, only Harrelson does a decent job; Travolta and Clooney are awful. Not only are they examples of miscasting, but of the kind of high-profile miscasting that wrecks scenes.
Although The Thin Red Line will not go down as the kind of war movie classic that Saving Private Ryan will, there are still many reasons to see this motion picture, especially for those who appreciate epic battle stories. See it for Malick's unparalleled visual style, for the primary character portrayals, and for the effectively chaotic, in-your-face combat sequences. The movie has the capacity to engage on both an intellectual and a visceral level. It's just a little disappointing that it could only do that for a majority of the running time instead of for the whole duration.
© 1998 James Berardinelli