28 Feb The Thin Red Line
The Thin Red Line, WWII Movie starring Jim Caviezel and so many other great actors. Read the list of stars on the movie poster.
(1998) A group of soldiers belonging to the Army Rifle Company called C-for-Charlie land on Guadalcanal to relieve Marine units and to push out the Japanese.
The Thin Red Line is the 2nd movie to be made based on the 1962 novel of the same name by James Jones, a World War II veteran who witnessed the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and then wrote From Here to Eternity. He also served on Guadalcanal, thus The Thin Red Line.
Terrance Mallick, who wrote the screenplay and directed the film, attracted a long list of well-known actors. Most of them had small parts, and many were relegated to the “cutting room floor.” George Clooney was on the screen for just a few minutes at the end. John Travolta had his 5 minutes near the beginning.
I loved the movie. In the first third, we met the (practically all very) young men who, for the most part, were scared to death. They showed it in different ways … but you knew.
Nick Nolte played the Lt. Colonel who kept pushing them up the hill toward the Japanese machine guns. At first I thought, “Boy, did Nick look good in 1998 … considering how bad he looked at the Academy Awards this week.” By the end of the movie, he was such an S.O.B. I thought he looked terrible.
The standouts were Elias Koteas, Sean Penn, Ben Chaplin, Jim Caviezel, Adrien Brody, and Woody Harrelson. Sometimes I wasn’t sure who was doing what but it didn’t matter. They were all in synch.
Such an emotional and poetic movie. I am sure that some didn’t like the voice overs, but that was my favorite part. Any WWII veteran who was there in 1942-1943 and watched this movie would have had a hard time speaking when it was done.
The Thin Red Line at amazon.com
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