Set in the WWII Pacific Theater, “The Thin Red Line” opens with voice over vignettes detailing the thoughts and emotions of several army men at different levels of the command structure. The opening builds towards the men landing on Guadalcanal, in the Solomon Islands, to kick off the first major infantry assault against the Japanese. They land unopposed until reaching a steep, grassy hillside that is protected by Japanese machine guns. Americans are ripped to shreds by bullets and leadership argues about the best strategy forward. Ultimately, a small team advances to take out the Japanese bunkers. The mission is a success and the Americans take the hill. We get another series of voice over vignettes before the film ends with a near ambush in a river; the men are saved thanks to a sacrifice from one man (incidentally, Jesus [Jim Caviezel, who was fantastic in this film]).
Though an astoundingly simple plot, the film settles into its nearly 3 hour runtime by focusing on the mental frame, emotional state, and relationships of the main 10 or so soldiers. The film does this by frequently leveraging voice overs and flashbacks (apparently a Terrence Malick trademark). For the most part I found this approach to be a bit too on-the-nose, philosophical, and spiritual or etherial for my taste. My one exception is that I loved the interplay between Nick Nolte’s Colonel Tall and Elias Koteas’s Captain Staros. Seeing two leaders, one a superior to the other, disagreeing on the path forward was a masterclass on leadership dialogue. They were both right, in their own time and way, and simply had differing motivations, priorities, and visions. It was fascinating to watch.
I ultimately liked the film and think that its biggest flaw is hardly its fault. In the same way “The Rise of Skywalker”’s ending felt like of lame after the perfection of “Endgame”, this film came out the same year as “Saving Private Ryan”—which I personally find to be the superior movie. While I can totally appreciate that “The Thin Red Line” is trying to be more complex and hardly as chest-beatingly patriotic, it just never coalesced into a cohesive storyline. "Private Ryan" did so.