Terence Malick’s dreamlike war picture The Thin Red Line is set in the South Pacific during World War II and centres on a company of US troops – C for Charlie Company, 1st Battalion, 27th Infantry Regiment, 25th Infantry Division – at the Battle of Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands during 1942.
The narrative is structured loosely around monologues from its large cast of characters.
Stars and unknowns line up together, with the bigger names mostly taking small parts (John Cusack, Woody Harrelson) or walk-ons (John Travolta, George Clooney) which leaves the focus on lesser-known actors (Elias Koteas, Ben Chaplin) and relative unknowns (Jim Caviezel, Adrien Brody, Dash Mihok), all of whom deliver strikingly memorable performances.
Nick Nolte, in top form as Lieutenant Colonel Tall, bluntly orders his men to take Hill 210, a suicide mission that will further his career at the expense of their lives. He doesn’t blink, but his thoughts reflect the same turmoil and self-disgust that gnaw at the openly compassionate Captain James Staros (Koteas).
Private Doll (Mihok) learns that nobody is what he pretends to be in this man’s army, including Private Bell, beautifully played by Chaplin, whose sexual fantasies about his wife (Miranda Otto) can’t erase the hard fact that she has left him for another man.
Penn, as First Sergeant Walsh, struggles to maintain his shell of cynicism by riding Corporal Fife (Brody), a reformed coward, and Private Witt (Caviezel), a Kentucky-bred idealist, until they realise that virtue is meaningless in a war that defines them only as cogs in a combat machine.
As all the narrative monologue voices converge on the battlefield – and the battle scenes rank with the greatest ever filmed – The Thin Red Line grows steadily in power and poetic grandeur.
The haunting camerawork (from great cinematographer John Toll) captures the lush beauty of the rainforest and serves as a counterpoint to the scenes showing the devastating effect of American and Japanese invaders on this serene island, from its Melanesian inhabitants to the shelling that reduces vegetation and wildlife to dead ash.
The Thin Red Line remains remarkably ambivalent about the rights and wrongs of combat, the random cruelty of war and, indeed, of nature itself.
First Sergeant Edward Welsh
Sean Penn Corporal Geoffrey Fife
Adrien Brody Private Witt
James Caviezel Private Bell
Ben Chaplin Captain Charles Bosche
George Clooney Captain John Gaff
John Cusack Sergeant Keck
Woody Harrelson Captain James ‘Bugger’ Staros
Elias Koteas Lieutenant Colonel Gordon Tall
Nick Nolte Sergeant Storm
John C. Reilly Private First Class Dale
Arie Verveen Private First Class Doll
Dash Mihok Sergeant McCron
John Savage Private Tella
Kirk Acevedo Lieutenant Colonel Billig
Simon Billig Private Peale
Mark Boone Jr Private Henry
Norman Patrick Brown Corporal Thorne
Jarrod Dean Private Coombs
Matt Doran Private Weld
Travis Fine First Lieutenant George Band
Paul Gleeson Corporal Queen
David Harrod Sergeant Becker
Don Harvey Private Carni
Danny Hoch Private Sico
Robert Roy Hofmo Private Ash
Thomas Jane 2nd Lieutenant Whyte
Jared Leto Private First Class Earl
Gordon Macdonald Marina
Marina Malota Private Floyd
Michael Mcgrady Private Tills
Tim Blake Nelson Marty Bell
Miranda Otto Private Mazzi
Larry Romano Private Train
John Dee Smith Corporal Jenks
Stephen Spacek Private First Class Bead
Nick Stahl Brigadier General Quintard
John Travolta 2nd Lieutenant Gore
Steven Vidler Private Hoke
William Wallace
Director
Terrence Malick
Video
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Nick Nolte, in top form as Lieutenant Colonel Tall, bluntly orders his men to take Hill 210, a suicide mission that will further his career at the expense of their lives. He doesn’t blink, but his thoughts reflect the same turmoil and self-disgust that gnaw at the openly compassionate Captain James Staros (Koteas).
