The Thin Red Line (1998)

Released the same year as Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan (and both of them inexplicably overlooked for Best Picture at the Oscars in favour of Shakespeare In Love), Terrence Malick’s Guadalcanal set World War Two drama meant it was a heavy year in terms of big screen subject matter. While Spielberg’s focused on the down and dirty D-Day landings followed by a search through Normandy for Private Ryan, Malick’s, as you might expect, is a more arty affair. That’s not to say The Thin Red Line doesn’t show you the violence of war; quite the opposite in fact, the middle section of a lengthy film is brutal, showing war at its very worst. The film has everyone you can think of in as well, from Sean Penn to George Clooney to a young John Cusack. Flitting between focus on different characters, The Thin Red Line is efficient and effective in its approach although it is perhaps a method that in the end prevents it from greatness. There’s plenty of hard-hitting character drama, but despite its runtime it’s arguably not quite sprawling enough to hammer home each individual story. The Thin Red Line is a very good film, but in my opinion, achieving greatness when tackling World War Two is something that Malick did eventually achieve in the wonderful A Hidden Life (2019). I’m sure many will disagree. 7.5/10