A stunning motion picture if....
Both movies feature Army infantry during harrowing battles. Ryan with D-day and Line with Guadacanal which was the turning point fo the war in the Pacific. Spielberg's movie followed a squad tracking down one man--asking what price a life. Malick's movie flickers between near-nameless soldiers taking a couple of hills from the Japs.
Both movies clock long--the three hour range. The directors use the Long=Important equation. In Malick's case, I wish he brought in the Tight=Excellent equation because its three hours of footage contains a stunning 2 hour 15 minute motion picture.
The Thin Red Line gets off to an ambiguous start and just never recovers. Two soldiers are frolicking on a Fiji-like island with the natives. Are they AWOL or are they part of some "hearts and minds" program?
Line flits from one cast member to another with all the rhyme and reason of a pinball. Sometimes the camera catches meaningful dialog, other times it's philosophical spoutings or pregnant pauses as the cast stares at one another. Then there are interminable flashbacks or flashelsewheres which do little to advance the story but a lot to pad its length. On top of that, dollop too many shots of the native animals going about their business or the sun filtering thru the trees. It all adds up to self-indulgence. That's where judicious editing could have made an amazing difference.
There are fine performances here. Nolte gives a scenary-chewing as an advance-at-any-cost colonel which puts Kubrick's equally mad general from Paths of Glory to big-time shame. John Cusack should be commended for his quiet, hits-all-the-right notes performance.
It can't be a WW2 flick without battle scenes and here Malick delivers. He builds the tension by having the troops land on the island with no resistance--they don't know when the Japs will be in their face and how they'll react under fire.
The camera sweeps and drifts over the tall grass as the men advance thru it. It has a poetic, lyrical quality. Then the silence is shattered with bullets and mortars going off in every direction, so the juxtaposition is startling. Firefights, especially the machine gun nest storming, are brutal. Malick shows he hasn't lost his touch.
But...
Always the "but" word. The movie does not build to a crescendo. There's a small battle which ends the movie. Men die and The Thin Red Line drifts to an anti-climatic ending with even more philosophical spouting. And that's it.
So it adds to up a one flawed helluva motion picture. If off kilter movies are your cup of tea, then go. If you're expecting a by-the-book WW2 flick, then you are in for a frustrating three hours taken from your life.
Movie's suitability for: