The Thin Red Line

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Karan G @RT18840987 Aug 8 99% of war movies out there just show things from the observers' perspective - the fighting, the killing, the politics. NOT THIS ONE. Terrence Malick is the out-of-the-box visionary who is more interested in showing his audience the war waged every second inside the minds of the soldiers of the C-Company before and during the battle - their peak thoughts, doubts and questions about Life and God, how they miss their loved ones even as bullets whizz all around them, and whether or not they'll make it. With every beautiful shot that rolls on ahead, the viewer is transposed directly into the midst of the war itself - the harsh Polynesian jungle, the atmospheric uncertainty of things during war, the raw wild untamed unforgiving nature which consumes the weak and the strong alike. This one's not for your regular popcorn-munching movie-goers, it will force you to think hard. There's your regular war movies, and then there's The Thin Red Line standing alone at a different level! Kudos! See more Adam A. @AdamBaum Jun 26 brilliant. all around brilliant See more Hunter T @huntertrace Jun 23 Terrence Malick’s masterpiece is the greatest cinematic illustration of evolutionary biology ever made. He filmed the exact arguments of Dawkins, Trivers, and Haidt without a single footnote. The film’s spine is the argument between Welsh (Sean Penn) and Witt (Jim Caviezel)—which is really the opponent-processing of a single human mind. Welsh is the cold gene’s-eye view; he preaches nihilism, yet his ancient tribal wiring forces him into machine-gun fire to save a dying man. Haidt’s elephant overrules the rider. Witt is the meaning-seeking animal. His final sacrifice isn't a rebellion against his evolutionary hardware; it's its purest expression, treating his band as fictive kin. Malick films the animal—bonding, betraying, climbing for rank, and dying for the men beside it. He exposes the machinery of natural selection, yet still allows us to choose meaning anyway. — Hunter Trace, author of The Why Behind Things (Available on Amazon). See more Daniel T @RT19601592 Apr 18 One of the worst films ever seen with massive number of excellent actors. Long shot of dreamy scenes that contribute absolutely nothing to the plot . No characters build up. Flat See more Ben W @Username618 Apr 18 I juist remember a crocodile and some gamelan, but that was the first minute, but I did sit through it. How to get across the mind-numbing tedium and terror of war, huh. See more Bryan M @RT97114384 Apr 15 Good war film, definitely not great. The cast is unreal but the story drags a bit for me. that being said, there are also a lot of intense fighting scenes and it's worth watching, but I can name 20 war films better pretty quickly. See more Read all reviews

The Thin Red Line

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