Thursday, January 22, 2009

The Thin Red Line

#35 on Glenn's Top 100 Movie List

Terrence Malick's The Thin Red Line is visually stunning in every way, imaging that from a Terrence Malick film. I've always liked it better that Saving Private Ryan, because while although Ryan does do a good job of demonstrating the horror of wartime violence, it seems somewhat in love with the graphic detail of it, like Sam Peckinpah's Wild Bunch. Malick's film is also considerably less hokey, and deals with a small group of soldier's personal thoughts while caught up in the larger grisly mechanics of war. Somebody once made the argument to me that this film is irresponsible because the soldiers are demonstrating doubts about being involved in the only inarguable war, World War II, but I think that argument is bunk because this film demonstrates the actual realistic thoughts that individuals would have in this situation, not the jingoistic infallible patriotism of so many other WWII movies. Anyway, it's amazing so check it out.

RATING: 91%

4 comments:

LipstickMom123 said...

Yeah, i know what you mean Glenn. World War 2 was really Americas war!

laurie said...

That is your best paint picture yet.

LoCo said...

I think we have a case of Multiple Personality Disorder here at R3.

John said...

This movie is to Saving Private Ryan what William James is to Sigmund Freud--far superior in retrospect. I really didn't "get" it when it came out, but it was because I was a dumb kid with bad hair and lousy taste in movies.