The Thin Red Line: Review By Josh

After twenty years in hiatus, Terrence Malick created The Thin Red Line, a captivating and beautiful film that unfortunately fell under the radar due to Saving Private Ryan's overwhelming success. If Saving Private Ryan captures the physical and emotional toil of war then The Thin Red Line is about its philosophical effects. Malick contrasts and deconstructs binaries as his characters try to make sense of them. There's a lot of subtlety going on throughout the film's near three hour runtime; the opening scene and the climax are closely linked.

The photography is absolutely stunning -- both the nature shots and the war scenes -- and Hans Zimmer's score is gorgeous.

Jim Caviezel, Elias Koteas, and Sean Penn are very good in this film; at times the breadth of the cast cause characters to drift in and out to a frustrating degree but it all comes back to those three.

Malick is underappreciated because he doesn't make "exciting" films. That may be true, but he makes films that are complex, visceral, and breathtaking to watch.