Critic Reviews
Thin Red Line, The (1998) Rank 4 Reviews
Expert Review Summary
based on (112) reviews
Click on the numbers to the right of the graph to see reviews of that rating
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Looking Closer (Jeffrey Overstreet)
There are a lot of critics (many of them friends of mine) complaining about The Thin Red Line. Terrence Malick’s first film in 20 years, an adaptation of James Jones’ 1962 autobiographical novel of World War 2, is anything but a crowd-pleaser. Even ...read the complete Thin Red Line movie review at Looking Closer (Jeffrey Overstreet)
IMDB.com
To state that _The_Thin_Red_Line_ centers on a group of American soldiers fighting for survival in the Guadalcanal conflict of World War II is to say everything and nothing about the film. A number of violent combat scenes occupy most of the film's ...read the complete Thin Red Line movie review at IMDB.com
Film Quips Online (John R. McEwen)
The absence of a central figure or definite plot line may be this film's only weakness. Though it is an intentional device designed to convey the tedium and random nature of the subject, it sometimes causes a sense of stalling or a lack of focus, ...read the complete Thin Red Line movie review at Film Quips Online (John R. McEwen)
Rochester Democrat and Chronicle (Jack Garner)
The Thin Red Lineopens on a palm-laced island, where natives perform ritual dances and carefree children swim amid the coral. All is tranquil.Gradually, we notice that one of the men is not a native. He's white. And soon we understand ...read the complete Thin Red Line movie review at Rochester Democrat and Chronicle (Jack Garner)
IMDB.com
Perhaps the big turnoff for many was this film's unconventionality. I'd be hardpressed to compare it to any other film that I've seen it is very, very artsy, incredibly slow and amazingly, it works beautifully.On my second viewing, I realized that the ...read the complete Thin Red Line movie review at IMDB.com
San Francisco Chronicle (Mick LaSalle)
Unique and courageous. It may be counted as one of the year's few steps forward in cinema. ...read the complete Thin Red Line movie review at San Francisco Chronicle (Mick LaSalle)
New York Daily News (Elizabeth Weitzman)
Here is something great and startling -- not necessarily the kind of comforting, consensus-creating film that wins Oscars, but unquestionably a movie that will live in the history of the medium. ...read the complete Thin Red Line movie review at New York Daily News (Elizabeth Weitzman)
TV Guide's Movie Guide (Maitland McDonagh)
An intensely internalized portrait of external pandemonium, a slippery, insidiously haunting work of poetry! ...read the complete Thin Red Line movie review at TV Guide's Movie Guide (Maitland McDonagh)
San Francisco Chronicle (Mick LaSalle)
San Francisco Chronicle (Mick LaSalle)
Deep Focus (Bryant Frazer)
The Thin Red Line may not be sui generis, but it is more or less without precedent in recent history. The obvious reference point is 1979's Apocalypse Now, which shares The Thin Red Line 's distended narrative style as well as Malick's penchant for ...read the complete Thin Red Line movie review at Deep Focus (Bryant Frazer)
Detroit News (Susan Stark)
Nick's Flick Picks (Nick Davis)
Malick's film is as technically well-assembled as one could ask, and the exquisite photography is
unmatched even by Toll's similarly epic-scale work on Mel Gibson's Braveheart. In the end, however,
it is not The Thin Red Line's ...read the complete Thin Red Line movie review at Nick's Flick Picks (Nick Davis)
IMDB.com
There are a lot of critics (many of them friends of mine) complaining about The Thin Red Line. Terrence Malick’s first film in 20 years, an adaptation of James Jones’ 1962 autobiographical novel of World War 2, is anything but a crowd-pleaser. Even ...read the complete Thin Red Line movie review at IMDB.com
IMDB.com
Divided into three distinct acts, the movie unfolds itself as we chronicle several weeks in the lives of a group of American soldiers during World War II. Through the incredible hardships they are forced to endure, they grow from strangers to friends, ...read the complete Thin Red Line movie review at IMDB.com
IMDB.com
The film takes place around the fight for Guadalcanal during World War II and focuses on a group of men in C Company. Rather than being a collection of increasingly brutal war scenes, however, The Thin Red Line is more of a character study as we follow ...read the complete Thin Red Line movie review at IMDB.com
filmsgraded.com (Brian Koller)
Ozus' World Movie Reviews (Dennis Schwartz)
In many ways it seems like a discourse on philosophy given by a company of infantrymen in Guadalcanal. ...read the complete Thin Red Line movie review at Ozus' World Movie Reviews (Dennis Schwartz)
Ozus' World Movie Reviews (Dennis Schwartz)
In many ways it seems like a discourse on philosophy given by a company of infantrymen in Guadalcanal. ...read the complete Thin Red Line movie review at Ozus' World Movie Reviews (Dennis Schwartz)
MovieMaze (Daniel Bund)
World Socialist Web Site (David Walsh)
The Onion (A.V. Club) (Scott Tobias)
Malick's powerful intermingling of brutality and beauty, his signature cutaways to indigenous flora and fauna, and the gentle lyricism of his disjunctive narration and painterly images are too rich to fully register in a single viewing. ...read the complete Thin Red Line movie review at The Onion (A.V. Club) (Scott Tobias)
Mr. Showbiz (Richard T. Jameson)
It's the awesome, metaphysically charged spectacle of man doing terrible things to man within the multicolored and multifarious cathedral of Nature. ...read the complete Thin Red Line movie review at Mr. Showbiz (Richard T. Jameson)
Film.com (John Hartl)
Could be called the "Red Badge of Courage" of World War II movies. ...read the complete Thin Red Line movie review at Film.com (John Hartl)
Washington Post (Michael O'Sullivan)
The disturbing ideas it plants in the soil of the soul need time and darkness ? not light ? to germinate. ...read the complete Thin Red Line movie review at Washington Post (Michael O'Sullivan)
World Socialist Web Site (David Walsh)
Village Voice (J. Hoberman)
As mystical as it is gritty, as despairing as it is detached. ...read the complete Thin Red Line movie review at Village Voice (J. Hoberman)
IMDB.com
The movie is about the effort to drive the Japanese out of Guadalcanal in World War II. It's an ensemble piece with a variety of characters, each dealing with the horrors of war in his own way. There's no clear protagonist or linear plot development, ...read the complete Thin Red Line movie review at IMDB.com
Movie Hell (Michael J. Legeros)
THE THIN RED LINE is a little like opera-you don't have to understand it to enjoy it. Confusing, confounding, abstract, and impressionistic, last year's *other* big war movie still contains some of the most striking imagery in years (decades?). Adapting ...read the complete Thin Red Line movie review at Movie Hell (Michael J. Legeros)
IMDB.com
And so begins the hardest critique I'll probably ever have to write. So many movies I see leave me with instant thoughts and criticism(s), while others linger in my head days, even weeks before I can finally sit down, organize them intelligently, and ...read the complete Thin Red Line movie review at IMDB.com
The UK Critic (Ian Waldron-Mantgani)
Of course, Terrence Malick is obviously still a genius on the set. He still knows how to film a classic picture, if not how to truly finish one. If the rumours are true, though, and he was making grand structural changes to "The Thin Red Line" even past ...read the complete Thin Red Line movie review at The UK Critic (Ian Waldron-Mantgani)
Palo Alto Online (Susan Tavernetti)
Here's the litmus test. If you absolutely loved Steven Spielberg's "Saving Private Ryan" because of its characters and engrossing story, you will probably hate Terrence Malick's World War II combat movie. But using Spielberg's extraordinary film as the ...read the complete Thin Red Line movie review at Palo Alto Online (Susan Tavernetti)
IMDB.com
'The Thin Red Line' marks the return of director Terrence Malick, whose last film, in 1978, entitled 'Days of Heaven', earned an Oscar for cinematography, and Malick knows how to visualize his films in an almost flawless fashion as he plunges his camera ...read the complete Thin Red Line movie review at IMDB.com
Movie Reviews UK
Welcome to today's lesson: a work of art isn't profound just because it confuses, somehow eluding your intellectual grasp. If anything the opposite is true, which is that communication must be established between an artist and their audience. ...read the complete Thin Red Line movie review at Movie Reviews UK
TV Guide Entertainment Network, Movie Guide
Call it the anti- Saving Private Ryan : Terrence Malick's graceful, chaotic adaptation of James Jones' 1962 novel about the bloody, attenuated campaign to take Guadalcanal Island in 1942-43 (he also wrote From Here to Eternity ), is an intensely ...read the complete Thin Red Line movie review at TV Guide Entertainment Network, Movie Guide
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