Thin Red Line, The

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Summary

It takes awhile to get there, but this is a good movie. A bit heavy handed and messy at times, the movie runs in spurts of rich complexity followed by periods of overbearing awkwardness.

It's quite clear where the movie fails: in the constant semi-poetic soliloquies. In a movie about the gritty reality of war, this is such the wrong device for by it's nature it breaks the fourth wall. For the most part, the little speeches add nothing except distraction, which is all quite unfortunate because the points of the movie--both the large and the specific--are quite clear already.

Details and Notes

The challenge in reviewing a movie like this is that, in a sense, one has to take into account and correct for the natural power of the subject and imagery. A decent budget and competent execution is going to yield powerful, moving images. In a way, the movie itself has to be better than this baseline for the movie itself to be good.

Pros: the construction of the movie is impressive in many ways. It's a high powered movie and for the most part manages to keep everything under control and it's admirable how the film is able to make the finer points despite all the power crashing about.

All this makes the voice overs and contrast flashbacks all the more unfortunate because the movie would be great if they just didn't do it. It's almost failure by choice.

Spoiler.

Having said that, I did like the voice over about the dying bird. Where one man sees a dying bird and sees nothing but pain... another sees the glory peeking through. If it were all or nothing, I'd remove the voice overs entirely and the movie would be excellent. There are a few that work, though. Maybe if each character had one, that could work.

There were also times where the movie failed in being realistic. When Woody Harrelson's character is dying from acute blood loss. He goes cold, starts to black out, but his complexion stays ruddy. I would expect him to as white as a sheet. This may seem minor, but this is very much a movie in which the fine points matter.

Despite all these problems, this is a good movie. The problem's don't cause the movie to fail, but they do frustrate the potential.