The Thin Red Line (film): Trolling for Oscars, I think this is too long and has too many characters

As a rather big WW2 film fan, how I managed to not see this film until last night is a real mystery to me. I can only guess that it happened because it is 3.5 hours long and it came out during a time in my life when I was concerned about college, girls, and beer a lot more than I was about seeing the latest Sean Penn film.

To call this a "Sean Penn" film isn't really even true because even though he is the only member of the cast that isn't mentioned in alphabetical order in the credits, he isn't really the star of the show. There are so many stars in this movie that it is quite difficult to state who the main character even is.

It's a decent film but honestly, from a "how is this moving flowing" point of view I feel as though it could have been at least an hour shorter than it was and while I appreciate the grand scope of it and how difficult it must have been to make, I dare say that I was actually quite bored a lot of the time that I was watching it.

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I can't even imagine how difficult it must have been for director Terrence Malick to manage all of these celebrities and their egos all at once. I would imagine it was rather maddening especially with Sean Penn in the mix. Perhaps that is why Sean Penn is featured so prominently in the credits even though I believe he actually has considerably less screentime than several other people in this movie.

Some of the appearances of stars in this movie such as John Travolta and Woody Harrelson are so brief that their presence is merely a cameo and is actually a bit distracting as far as the overall plot is concerned. I think maybe the introduced so many stars so that the audience would have to keep guessing who is going to get killed and who isn't. When you have a definitive star in a film, it is normally quite clear who is going to come out on top in the end.

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I'll give credit where credit is due: The cinematography and location scouting in this movie is absolutely wonderful... well, at least for the parts where there is some sort of combat or anticipation of combat. I am actually quite surprised that they were able to make this movie for a little as they did (under $60 million) when you consider the immense scope of the various locations as well as the rather huge amounts of pyro and extras that would have to be coordinated to make the battle scenes actually work.

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one thing I could have done without and I think was actually the entire point of the film, is that this movies is moreso about the overall philosophy of war, rather than being about any real eventful battle that took place in particular. It IS in fact based on a real event, but the characters are all made up and this is based on a mostly fictional book that was written in the 60's.

I'm all for there being aspects of a movie that focus on the psychological effects that war has on individuals, but at times it seemed so deep that it was approaching the point of becoming confusing. Also, the amount of flashbacks and changes of scenery that take place are sometimes abrupt and don't really make a great deal of sense as far as what is going on in the moment. We'll be in a trench tucked below machine gun fire and all of a sudden Jack Bell (Ben Chaplin) has a 15 minute flashback to hanging out with his wife. I'm exaggerating there, it isn't that long, but I felt that this was more distracting than leading to the real story the 11th or so time that it happened. We get it ok? you miss your wife and would rather be there with her rather than getting fired at by machine guns - which is perfectly understandable.

I think if there were any standout roles in this it wouldn't be Sean Penn who acted just like you would expect Sean Penn to act. The person who did the best in my mind was Nick Nolte as Colonel Tall.

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The rather ruthless manner in which he sends his soldiers to almost certain death in order to obtain a glorious victory is heartless and this is supplemented by how he seems rather unconcerned about the deaths after the fact and focuses on his own glory and how he is going to recommend the survivors for various awards shows a lot about what kind of man this fictional person is. One line he says is "I'm going to recommend you for the silver star and what the hell, we'll throw a purple heart in there as well."

The meaninglessness of these awards is kind of exhibited when the men who saw their friends get blown to bits is on full display here when they barely react to hearing news that they are eligible for 2 of the highest awards available in the US Military.

As expected and as I am sure was intended before they even green-lit this picture was when it was nominated for almost every category at the Academy Awards. It failed to win any of them though and I was happy to see that. There are some movies out there that you can just tell were created in an effort to win Oscars, perhaps focused on that a bit more than making sure the film was actually entertaining.

The general public I think begrudgingly rates this as one of the best war films ever made but it still stands at normally below 7/10 on most scales and while I didn't read into it, I think it is probably for reasons that are similar to my own.

At the end of this film I can't say exactly what it was about. I mean it was obviously about the Pacific aspect of WW2, but other than that.... huh?

Should I watch it?

I expect to catch some flak for this but honestly, I really don't think you should. As far as epic war movies are concerned this one really didn't ring well with me. While I avoided looking at my phone because I never bring my phone to my bed with me, I did find myself checking to see how much of the movie was left and was kind of disappointed when I saw that I had nearly 2 hours remaining, then an hour 20 and I'm just like "can we wrap this up already?"

I think there are a lot of better choices out there than this one and I believe they stacked the deck by including basically every single male superstar that existed in 1998 and even including a couple that were sort of outliers that hadn't done anything of note in a while like John Cusack and John Travolta.

That being said this film holds a place in cinematic history even if I personally don't really think it is deserved.