What is The Thin Red Line Even About? (WWII Cinema)
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 13 ส.ค. 2022
- In this video, we explore Terrance Malick's 1998 masterpiece The Thin Red Line. What does this movie reveal about how we view war? What does it reveal about our values and human nature? What is The Thin Red Line even about? We'll explore the film's cinematography and narrative to find an answer. Given this video is part of a series, I recommend you go and watch the previous videos in my World War II series.
Also, what do you make of my analysis? Did you get something else from the movie? Let me know in the comments!
Thomas Flight's video on Terrance Malick: • Why Do Terrence Malick...
Jon Hesk's article: risweb.st-andrews.ac.uk/porta...
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This is one of the best movies I have ever seen. Every time I see it I see something different. My perception of various characters changes. Every time I hear a different commentary on it I gain a new understanding of this complex and magnificent film.
Spielberg knows how to tell a story with action, drama and tie that up neatly. Malik makes you think about it more. For me Spielberg makes me ask, could I have done that, Malik makes me ask, would I have thought or felt that.
Nice. Very astute point.
My thoughts on the Thin Red Line: it was one of the most moving films I've ever seen. Every time I've ever watched it, it moved me to tears; and I'm not easily moved emotionally, especially by a film. It is appropriate that the film recites Homer, as the themes of the Iliad are analyzed in the film. The Iliad is a very interesting work, not only is mysteriously, ancient, the work focuses on the existential crisis of the Human Condition in relation to violence, war, and cruelty. The Iliad is not just about the Trojan War, but about War in general, the lasting effects it has on its participants, and the tragedy of it all.
I remember being rocked by Saving Private Ryan, and I still enjoy watching it from time to time. When I first saw Thin Red Line, it was inevitable that I would compare it to Ryan, and being a slower movie with fewer action scenes, I walked away thinking it was "good, but not great".
After watching Thin Red Line a few years later, (and being a bit more reflective), I realized it is the superior story. While Ryan relies mostly on spectacle and the single story line, Thin Red Line combines a few threads together into one larger narrative. Ryan is about saving one person because the Army told them to, while Thin Red Line is a number of individuals trying to save themselves from the Army.
I love both movies, and will watch them when I need whatever they each give.
I agree it's a masterpiece. I think it's more than a "war movie" -- it's a meditation on existence. And let's not forget that Hans Zimmer's soundtrack is also a part of its power.
@PL-rf4hy spot on! you nailed it! the OST is superb!
I want to see a 5 hour cut of the movie
There us an extended edition on Criterion Collection DVD/Blu-Ray.
Superb stuff and Caviezels best work
when i watched this for the first time i felt a sort of Immersiveness, like i was there, and it put me inside the minds of these soldiers, the cinimatography was a blend of nature, and the horror of war, the narrative for me was such beauty in the time of war. i have this in my DVD collection as well as "SAVING PRIVATE RYAN".
Saving Pvt Ryan is typical Spielberg - an action movie made for the malls. "Shallow" The Thin Red Line , Alex, what a splendid analysis! It reflects war in a soldiers mind, its thoughts Witt, Bell, & Train's thoughts, the common man's, the private's ones, unlike show war is shown on the news, interviewing staff officers eh. They reflect war as I saw it, an infantryman for 27x years. The movie also captures the mundane endless boredom & occasional fury of killing. And funny you mention the Iliad... don't ever read it in a war, I did, in Iraq - the Thin Red Line at times is like reading the Iliad.... And ps, the unit in the movie, although never mentioned except in a few sentences "I joined to buy a car" is the 164th Infantry Regiment of the North Dakota NG
It's actually based on Charlie Company of the 27th Infantry Regiment, 25th Infantry Division.
Both are masterpieces yet I lean more towards the "Thin Red Line". It is (at least to me) Deeper, an introspective about the Human condition through the experience of war and despite being set during WWII I think is goes far beyond the historical conflict it is framed upon. It seems to me a reflection about the human condition after having been expelled out of Paradise, a melancholic account in the aftermath of exiting Eden, often told through the monologues of the characters which are used to portrait different emotional shades of our mortal existence, fear, grieve, hope, violence, guilt and faith.
The Paradise is still out there but something's changed and it doesn't feel the same and somehow we cannot perceive it in the same way any more hence the desire to return to that "initial state of innocence" beyond the complexity of any political interests and the machinery of war, Witt swimming under water again with some local kids, going back into his mother's womb where there is no gravity and thus the kids are like cherubins flying in the water, taking Witt back to that initial state, returning to "Paradise".
Thank you for sharing this incredibly interesting interpretation. I agree, and I think the movie gives you a lot to work with in regard to this reading on The Fall and Eden. Really interesting!
Go back to bible school buddy.
I put this film on in the "Day Room" during some of my rare free time during Advanced Individual Training in 2005. At the time one of the few possessions I had was DVDs. I remember a Drill Sergeant passing through the room and seeing I had it playing and saying it was a *"real" war movie* in a way where it seemed as to be approving of us watching it. Drill Sergeants rarely approved of anything we did, them being something of a different species than us. These guys were animals and in the midst of the global war on terrorism they were extra hard and this guy was one of the hardest. I always shared this sentiment (that Thin Red Line is way beyond Saving Private Ryan) that a grunt hugging the dirt is way, way, way more philosophical than idiot skeptics could ever be. You'll envy a blade of grass when you're on your stomach trying to survive because nobody is trying to kill the blade of grass. Thin Red Line emphasizes the unnaturalness of war. Birds and bats and owls and crickets and butterflies will still do their thing and even be there staring at you. Horses drawing carriages will still look at humans like they've gone insane with the noise and death that they bring. His shots of nature are very intentionally placed.
True. Having experience the jungle war that was Vietnam, I find this familiar. The drill sergeants were s.o.b.s who vied to see how much hell they could put you through. ..The hilly jingle where I was, was very beautiful - if it were not for what we were doing there to our fellow man and nature.
Wow! This is one of the coolest comments I have received, and it's really insightful! Thank you for sharing!
I saw the BW version of The Thin Red Line and it was completely different. The Thin Red Line referred to the thin red line between the mad and the sane. THAT was a great movie, the color version.......SOS for war movies
I wasn't aware of a BW version of The Thin Red Line. I'll have to seek that out. It sounds like a totally different experience. Thank you for sharing!
Malick is a very polarizing director. The most common response you will get is that his films are "boring." The most common response from film buffs who prefer narrative-drive filmmaking is that he is in dire need of an editor and more dialogue.
I admit his work is not for everyone. But he is easily one of my favorite filmmakers. And in my humble opinion The Thin Red Line is perhaps the most poignant film about war I have ever seen, as much as it may disappoint fans of various iterations of the "war film" genre (both classic and modern). The sequence where they finally culminate the assault on the Japanese bunker position and overrun the Japanese headquarters is as bone-chilling as it is beautiful. It manages to evoke horror, barbarism, grace, and awe - all at once. Much like the film as a whole.
The film is best appreciated by a viewer who has made themselves receptive and open on all levels - not just the aesthetic, narrative, and analytical, but the spiritual, emotional, and primal as well. Once you truly start to FEEL this movie the the journey it takes you on is incredible.
Excellent breakdown of Malick as a filmmaker. I couldn’t have said it better. Thank you for sharing!
Well, I consider myself a person of taste and discrimination and I found it incredibly boring. What soldiers staring endlessly at butterflies tells us about war entirely escaped me, and given the film's relatively poor box office compared to "Ryan" it apparently escaped a number of other people as well.
I don't think he's boring - just pretentious.
I recently watched Days of Heaven, I actually thought the end was petty intense lol
Yeah thin red line was more like an esoteric film based on 1942 Guadalcanal. Saving Private Ryan was more like an adventure film. Definitely way more fun and easier to follow and understand. Plus I think Spielberg knows what a filmgoers wants where Terrence malick is much more concerned with the senses and the mind. Thus his film is harder to follow and seemingly no real “let’s get the bad guy”
Thin Red Line didn't seem to do as well as Private Ryan as the latter came out second and I think the public compared it unfavorably to the earlier film. I was an Army LT at the time and I got really tired of all the pontification throughout the movie as I never once encountered people in the field talking like that. I think the characters are saying what screen writers who never served THINK soldiers say when they have the time. All that said, the scene where they call in fire for mortars was one of the most accurate indirect fire scenes I've seen in a film. I liked how the movie looked but developed a better respect for in much later on, once I realized what the film was trying to get across
have you read the book? it's very much like the movie, maybe more so
Crocodile. It’s a crocodile!
Not that serious my guy.
Thank you. This was a fantastic video ! Subscribed 😊
A lot of people don’t know that this Thin Red Line is actually a remake of an earlier 1964 movie which follows the same general theme. The remake kinda loses its mystique when you realise this. The original is available on TH-cam.
Nice work! The Thin Red Line is such an experience like all of Malick's films and you explored each and every theme imaginable.
Thank you! I couldn’t agree more. I am glad you enjoyed the video!
I like the themes of this movie, it hits different. I remember going on patrol over the in Northern Iraq by Erbil when it would rain the land would be green. We would pull over and just enjoy the moment with some smokes while waiting for route clearance.
I used to think of a cig as 7 min closer to home. Smoked a lot of cigs.
Private Ryan and thin red line are my two favorite war movies. I may lean more towards private Ryan but I get in the mood for the thin red line a lot
One does not forget masterpieces, this is one.
Insightful!
I haven't watched this film yet, but this video has convinced me to check it out.
Go forth and experience, my friend.
It's not a war movie. It's a movie that just happened to have a war in it.
I wish I could watch it again for the first time.
That "alligator" is a crocodile.
Jim C is starting to look like he was heaven sent. Weird times, weird times.
He sure looks like someone who believes he was XD
Good actor though!
we used to cut the ears off the VC to count our kills. sometimes some joker would cut off both ears to double his kill count. one time our CO got pissed because Stars and Stripes was coming to film the battle field with a CBS crew and made us sew the ears back on as punishment. we were just kids so guys were sewing ears on upside down or not even matching colors(some of those VC had really dark skin) I remember one lucky guy even had a stapler! to this day I cannot imaging how that guy managed to get his hands on a stapler out in the jungle. it was so strange the guy may have well had a soft serve ice cream machine strapped to his back.
Pacific war and the European wars were vastly different experience’s for the men fighting them.
I watched The Pacific movie series and i remember a scene where two guys are discussing, one of them talks about the war in Europe and the other guy responds: "There's a war in Europe?" sarcastically.
I think that sums up the feelings of the guys in the Pacific and the hell they went through quite well.
Even after the war almost nobody cared about the results of the Pacific, all they talked about was the "glorious" defeat of the Nazis.
The German campaign was seen as the honourable and praiseworthy war. The Pacific war was dirty, bloody, foreign. Nobody cared.
It is quite interested how two different wars fought at the same time had such an different reception in the American public.
I know the guys in Melbourne Australia who provided the arms and set up blank firing of the arms for the movie. They told me a lot of the movie was filmed in the Port Douglas, North Queensland, Australia area. I found it an interesting movie on several levels. The appalling, useless waste of life - promising lives of young men cut short. Lots of sub stories, such as, the officer who does not want to unnecessarily risk the lives of his men assaulting the heights with Japanese bunkers, dealing with ambition of peacetime soldiers whose advancement in rank are well served in war time. As one US officer during the Vietnam War is actually reported to have said referring to that War and during the War - 'Don't knock it, its the only War we have'. The movie has some intriguing moments but I am ambivalent about it. I served as a soldier for 22 years in the 1980s and 90s but am very glad I was never sent overseas to fight in a war. At the time I would have done so and with commitment but looking back now, I am glad I was not faced with such an awful prospect. Thank you for taking the time for reading my comment.
Thank you for sharing your perspective and insight!
Nice analysis. Crocodile, no alligators in that part of the world,m
I watched this movie in the theaters a few weeks after watching Saving Pvt. Ryan and it was a mistake to release this right after that movie. Everyone I know hated. I remember hating it myself. I was a teenager then but rewatching it many years later I loved it for what it is. But it was really a mistake releasing this movie just right after Pvt. Ryan.
I almost forgot the ads didn't do it justice too. It vividly remembered it was marketed as "Saving Private Ryan of the Pacific".
Very good
It's ok and visually stunning, the first time I watched I was underwhelmed after seeing Private Ryan which is much more dynamic and more along the line of a traditional Hollywood war movie. It is obviously more introspective but the voice overs are too numerous and a bit confusing sometimes. You really sometimes don't know who is speaking in the voice overs. The last one on the boat in the ending scene I believe is the soldier who states he had seen enough etc. "I figure after this things can get better" and he is basically a minor character with hardly any screen time. Too much ambiguity and perhaps too much ambition by Malick but still thoughtful, haunting and beautiful at times.
Thin red line was a movie that drove me crazy. The intense way of the character of Nick Nolte, the combat footage etc.. Then the slow down to a crawl of the character flashing back with his girl. Keep the combat and intensity going, melancholy scenes are for pure drama tv/movies.
The only film that I have ever walked out on at the theater.
That’s cool, did you also walk out of this video essay?
@@gracehawkins4259 I did not for I enjoyed this discussion about the movie.
@@Freygeirr7 me too. why didn’t you like the movie?
Were you expecting Saving Pvt. Ryan?
@@Christendom88 The average condescending twat likes judging people that he hopes he will never meet in person, lest there should be consequences. It serves, in his rather sheltered mind, as a substitute for competition- without the icky-ness of true risk.
Jog on little one. You've been "engaged", and will now be ignored, as you deserve. I'm not talking to you, I'm talking about you.
Seeing Nick Noltes character reminded me of an officer we had when I served, he’d almost burst with rage while speaking down the radio to anyone who’d not followed his orders 100%….there bits in the film I think captured modern warfare very well, but there’s an overdose of big names , that I just don’t think works…the absurdity of a grenade detonating, killing yourself by accident happens in war,
That's kind of one of the the director's points. Everyone is a big name, a main character. And they are still nobodies who die in sometimes stupid ways.
Good cometary ! There’s a lot going on in this film.
My impression when these two WWII movies came out in the same year was that one was mainstream entertainment and the other was hoping to win an Oscar. In terms of marketing, "Saving Private Ryan" hit the theaters first, so "The Thin Red Line" was advertised as basically another mainstream entertainment movie. Pretty sure most "The Thin Red Line" audience members were disappointed once they realized they were watching an Art House type film rather than "Saving Private Ryan Goes to the South Pacific."
I saw both at the theater and fairly quickly switched into a more Art House mindset once I realized I had been misled by the movie trailers for "The Thin Red Line." Still, it just didn't resonate with this combat veteran and then-US Army Reserve member. "War is bad. People are messed up. Life goes on." Thanks, Malick. Like I didn't know these things already. Yawn.
As for "Saving Private Ryan," it blew me away with realism. I had a very, very rough time during the beach landing scene, flashing back to breaching the berms between Kuwait, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia during Desert Storm. Some smart aleck staff officers with the Big Red One (1st US Infantry Division) had named the assault lanes through the berm in honor of the division's history: Omaha, Utah, and so on. Between that and the expectation the division would have 50 percent casualties and be combat ineffective within 48 hours of breaching the berm, I was pretty shaken up at the end of the sand table walkthrough conducted by the Assistant Division Commander back in 1991. Watching the movie's Omaha Beach assault brought back a LOT of memories - breaching the berm, chemical attack alarms, an F-16 crash nearby, an ammunition truck explosion, and so on. I was on the theater floor for a minute or two during that scene. I was nearly obsessed with realism in those days - counting Garand rounds (8 per clip), German 20mm rounds (5 per clip), and so on. The only violation I caught on that first viewing was the US sniper in the bell tower never pausing to load a clip in his Springfield 1903 while trying to slow the German attack. Malick's attempt to make Guadalcanal look a cross between Stanley Kubrick's "Full Metal Jacket" and his "Barry Lyndon" just didn't have a chance with me. Maybe I will give "The Thin Red Line" another chance a quarter century later. But I'm still a rivet counter and don't have high hopes. Of course, expectations are frequently our worst enemy.
Wow! Thank you for sharing! It's incredible to know how realistic Saving Private Ryan, which was a big part of my video on it (th-cam.com/video/GQdTS9PDJA0/w-d-xo.html). Though I focus mainly on how the filmmaking techniques make it feel realistic, it's amazing to know how to goes down to the finest details. Thank you for sharing your experience and insight! I hope you give Thin Red Line another chance. It's one of my favorites, but I also get that it's not for everyone.
Also the MG-42s burst of fires are waaay too long in some scenes. The barrel would’ve melted.
@@hugosophy Great observation. The barrel change movements required for the MG-42 made it unsuitable for most vehicle uses. That's why German tanks and other vehicles primarily used an MG-34 variant, not the faster-firing "Hitler zipper."
You have to individually load round in the 1903, a stripper clip won't fit underneath the scope.
None of the actors even knew what it was about. It was originally supposed to be about Ben Chaplins character, but the director changed it and no one knew until the premiere
My fav war movie
I have watched this movie three times. Once when I was home sick from school and didn't understand what was going on. Chalk it up to the fever.
The second time I watched it, I was in the Army and figured I'd give it another try. Sean Penn's hair was so out of regulations it just pissed me off.
The third time I watched it I had been out of the Army for a few years and decided maybe I would understand it this time. I just don't get it. Hippie thinking made the Battle of Guadalcanal boring to me. That's ridiculous.
Totally agree...well said!
Letters from iwojima and thin red line best war movies ever I sayz.from a stoner who watched movies for 10 years straight
Soldier philosophers
I’m glad the 90’s trend of “narrator’s existential monologue with background melodramatic musical score” ended.
This is what happens when the filmmakers take too many drugs.
If you are unfamiliar with Terrence Mallicks approach - the shots in the film wander because we are seeing the view from Gods perspective. He is checking in on his creation - the trees, the island, the creatures. He seems to favor the simple and primitive island people. When you see soldiers, we hear their inner thoughts as God.
I saw this in the theatre as a sophmore in college, went with a group of friends and a few girls. I got in a fight with my film critic friend that accompanied me. "People from the midwest in 1940's didn't talk like that!" It was so boring! Made no sense! They just didn't get it (and happen to be atheists). Never saw any of those girls again. Everyone was expecting Saving Private Ryan jungle edition and got a thoughtful intellectual film instead....
It is a nature documentary with some war that happens to be going on and interrupting the scenery shots. All it is missing is Attenborough narrating.
What's it about?
Property, the whole effin thing's about property!
I've seen it 4 times and unfortunately, it doesn't improve with age. It's a middling film that might've been a masterpiece had a good editor gone to work on it with a chainsaw. As it stands, it's meandering, overly long and lacks a coherent story. Too big an ensemble cast vying for precious screen time results in too many shallow characters that you never get to know or come to care about. Seems they tried to make the story serve the actors' egos, instead of the other way around. It had its good points, though. Nick Nolte's visceral, repulsive performance was truly gripping and the outstanding cinematography really captured the stunning natural beauty of the landscape. The ridge line assault scenes were well done and the addition of P-39 Airacobras was definitely cool!
Couldn't disagree more. REDLINE brilliant film.
The Thin Red Line isn't just a film, it's an experience.
And an education amigo..Question provocking too..
So's getting run over by a bus.
A bad experience.
@@timp3931 Agreed, a total waste of time. not entertaining and 'hippy' motivated. Should've set it in Vietnam,
Butterflies and flowers. Just ask anyone who was there.
- Hollywood
War destroys nature.
These two films remind me of the difference between King of Kings and The Greatest Story Ever Told. The latter is an attempt at a serious contemplation of the whole meaning of Christ's like and death; the former never loses sight of the opportunities for inspiration through entertainment. Problem is, Greatest Story may be the more "worthy" film, but it's also a dead bore. KoK, for all its faults and innacuracies, somehow caught the spirit and essence of Christ's life and death and thus became a family favorite, inspiring as many people as Greatest Story put to sleep. The lesson is, involve your audience through entertainment before hitting them over the head with "art". The two are not mutually exclusive.
The huge problem with this film was that it was about the Army, not the Marines. The film is very misleading from a historical perspective, acting as if the Army came in and captured Guadalcanal The battle was fought primarily by the Marines and when the Army arrived it was mainly for rear action and to set up a larger base and logistics structure in order for the Marines to continue advancing towards New Guinea. That was my main issue when this movie came out.
9:00
"The Thin Red Line" had NOTHING to do with the Yenghi. The original reference was to the BRITISH infantry at the battle of Crimea. The British army, not the best army in the world, was facing the RUSS, and could only hold the ridge by spreading the infantry out.
"In November 1854, The Times war correspondent William Russell, writing from the Crimea, reported that an attack by Russian cavalry had been repulsed, having come up against a piece of ‘Gaelic rock… a thin red streak topped up with a line of steel’ - a description that would later become ‘the thin red line’. Russell was describing the heroic part played by the 93rd Highlanders in the Battle of Balaclava". SEE, nothing to do with the Yenghi, they weren't even there.
It raises the question. "Has the US ever done anything that it does not steal from the original European sources? Yenghi steal the whole of their supposed "culture". There is nothing original inside the US, it is all copied.
Guadalcanal is Guadaru kanaru in native language.
I saw this in a theater with my dad, a WW2 navy vet. Neither of us knew what it was about. Listening to your rantings, I still don’t know WTF this movie was about.
Really sad that you don't know
@@maximaler No, really sad I wasted money and time on it.
@@zascreamer100 haha, well I love this movie, fav war movie
@@maximaler
Good on ya mate. To each his own. It was just too odd for my dad, I didn’t like the dream sequences. More into something like Greyhound
Natgeo
It's hard to imagine assembling so many genuinely great actors, giving them a genuinely great subject matter, and producing such a genuinely AWFUL movie.
It's about eye candy .
Saving Ryan was a well made but predictable bore. Red Line was something else completely.
The thin red line was the greatest anti war movie ever made
Mickey Mouse Never Came Back 😢
I tend to dislike Malick. The movie is very well made but every time I try to watch it I find it kinda pretentious, probably due to the ubiquitous voiceovers that feel needlessly highbrow
A Thin Red Line is absurd. It's trying to be 'Beach Red' 1967. But fails miserably.
Movie was too philosophical for me. Saving private ryan is so far the best war film i have watched.
I liked Nolte's part in TTRL but I totally agree with you. TTRL was way too philosophical where it's no fun trying to rewatch it.
@@joemckim1183 Yeah, I didn't rewatch it either. One time was enough for me lol.
@@KatrinaJoseph I like your last name. 😉
@@joemckim1183 and my first name?
@@KatrinaJoseph It's not bad, just saying your last name is my first name.
Saving private Ryan is a propaganda movie entertaining for a couple of hours. The Thin Red Line is a painting of industrial society and humanity.
Thin Red Line is one of those films where the director shoots footage and then figures it out in the end. Thinking if you have enough coverage you can cut it any way you want. Problem is ole boy never figured it out. Movies, like everything else, have conventions, shorthand, heuristics. If you want to do whatever you want, however you want then sit down with piece of paper and box of crayons. Otherwise you’re wasting everybody’s money
Crack me up... "Nature" is the quintessential epic never ending no mercy or empathy War Zone... it is not some Walt Disney Wonderland... it's kill or be killed 24/7 365 days of the year.😂😂😂
Yup but there is beauty in it
One of the worst films I’ve ever watched. Left the cinema before it even finished!
Guadalcanal was America's first taste of battle in WW2. There was no war-weariness yet. The men weren't battle tested so there was no introspection or any of the shit depicted in the film. Besides, those men didn't know what to expect when they landed on that beach anyway.
Wow :) a man who was actually there
@@patnor7354 You know what, I'd rather have been there than spend one day on the movie set among all those pretentious douchebag Hollywood actors.
Please ditch the music playing over your voice. I always hate that. The music isn't even good. It's literally just noise. Will come back for another video. Cannot finish this one.
A unique Director, not like the man child, mother fixated Spielberg or the very shaky very Barnum & Bailey Nolan and his Big Themes.
What is it about, seriously?
Thin Red Line is Cinema - artificiality, a lot like “The Painted Word”; PVT Ryan tries for reality -more like a documentary.
I can't stand films that deplore soldier behaviour as TRL did more films produced and directed by people who fairly portray the wide dichotomy of fear and bravery please
I don't say this very often, but here we are again. You're missing the point. War isn't nobility and cinematic/dramatic license and it doesn't have main characters when you're on the front line. Soldiers are told to do terrible things and they do them regardless of what side they're on. Murder is murder even if you have the patina of justifiability on it. It's complete dehumanization of the "enemy" as well as the "heroes." The entirety of James Jones' works on WWII is about it, how the Army has to dehumanize its soldiers because otherwise there is no Army, then sends them into a place where essentially everything that was civil about humanity has broken down, and then if they survive they can't just go back to being regular people.
Actually, though I love TRL the movie, I'm not sure Jones would have liked it. Malick got the sort of philosophical side of war that Jones was writing about, but it went with too simple portrayals of the characters on sides, even if they're all in the same company. Witt vs Welsh, Staros/Stein vs Tall. And it went too Hollywood at the end, but then I wonder if that's because the producers were breathing down Malick's neck to finish the damn thing in a reasonably palatable way.
Worst war movie ever
Band of Brothers was better than both these movies.
I can’t compare private Ryan to band of brothers. They’re kind of the same entity since Spielberg and hanks are behind it. Private Ryan is a 3 hour movie and band of brothers is a ten part mini series. I think they’re very alike personally
👎👎 Ungodly bad movie. Every 3 minutes it seemed like it was wrapping up, then dragged on for like 7 hours.
Such a dope you are
Gobledegook. That's what the film review is. I remember this movie when it came out. I saw it soon after Saving Private Ryan and thinking how inferior it was both technically and story wise. This movie is a long winded visual essay about how war is waste. Private Ryan tries to put a noble spin of their sacrifice while Red Line doesn't even try. In the end, one side gets richer and then gets to write the history they want to self congratulate. The philosophical sophistry of the movie and this reviewer never ages well.