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    Nostalgia Central
    Home»Movies»Movies by Decade»Movies - 1990s
    Movies - 1990s Movies - T 4 Mins Read

    Thin Red Line, The (1998)

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    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 ageing battalion commander Lieutenant Colonel Tall, bluntly orders his men to take Hill 210 where a well-concealed Japanese bunker at the top of the hill, bristling with machine guns, commands the approaches – it’s 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.

    Some background footage was shot at Guadalcanal, the actual setting for the story, but the island was malaria-ridden and too rugged and remote to sustain a movie crew, so most of the filming, which involved 250 actors and 200 crew members, took place in the Daintree Rainforest and on Bramston Beach in Queensland, Australia, about 1,000 miles southwest of Guadalcanal, across the Coral Sea.

    After 100 days in Queensland, filming the set-piece battle for Hill 210, the shoot then moved to the Solomon Islands for the next 24 days to film the jungle scenes. The last three days of filming took place on the Pacific Ocean near Santa Catalina Island (about 20 miles southwest of Long Beach, California).

    The Thin Red Line received numerous accolades, including seven Oscar nominations, six Satellite Awards from the International Press Academy, and a Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival. The film earned $98.1 million in worldwide box office receipts.

    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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