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Review by Susan Granger
3 stars out of 4
Writer/director Terrence Malick, known as the J.D. Salinger of
the movies, is the near-mythic Harvard graduate, Rhodes Scholar,
former journalist and philosophy professor who has exiled himself from
Hollywood's film industry for nearly two decades after making
"Badlands" and "Days of Heaven." Now he's back with this screen
adaptation of James Jones' novel about the men in an Army Rifle
company, C-for-Charlie, who suffer and change, making psychological
discoveries about themselves, as they attempt to capture a Japanese
base on an island in the South Pacific during the W.W.II battle of
Guadalcanal. The casts consists of Sean Penn (a cynical sergeant),
Nick Nolte (an ambitious officer), Elias Koteas (their
conscience-stricken leader), Woody Harrelson (a doomed sergeant), John
Cusack (a self-sacrificing captain), John Travolta (with a mustache)
George Clooney (in a cameo), with Ben Chaplin and newcomer Jim
Caviezel as the two pivotal privates. Filmed in Port Douglas, a
coastal community near Australia's Great Barrier Reef, the
cinematography is filled with sweeping imagery and the story is
punctuated with fierce bursts of energy and as Malick explores how the
various men confront fear. While his sense of irony and humanity is
evident, Malick's abstract, emotionally detached style just doesn't
seem to mesh with the structured urgency of a combat tale. The pace is
ponderous, filled with contemplative, philosophical musings about God
and nature and the insanity of war. Malick's metaphors are often
opaque in meaning and pretentious, if not condescending, as dialogue,
like "The closer you are to Caesar, the greater the fear." On the
Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, "The Thin Red Line" is a meditative 7,
a bizarre war movie.
Copyright © 2000 Susan Granger
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