The Thin Red Line (1964)

It's not great by any means, but it's a pretty good movie that didn't leave me filled with regret for investing time in it.

Fanciful, disturbing, and wildly original, it announces the arrival of a fresh, bold voice in American cinema.

Yo, there's no way for me to review this film without saying, take your *insert ethnicity + "ass" here* to see this film,like now. You have to see it in order to know what you're really messing with.

Watching it is like watching the spectacle of a class clown at their best: you laugh at their jokes, instigate their defiance, and "ooooh" when they get in trouble.

British actor Terence Hardiman, who played an abbot in the excellent series "Cadfael" and a Luftwaffe major in another excellent British TV series "Secret Army" had a tiny bit role in the movie. He appears as a survivor in the aftermath of a vicious firefight with Japanese troops, grouped around the colonel who hastily arrived at the sight to inspect the conditions of his men. I suppose he was just a nobody at that time.This is a highly recommended black and white film for war movie buffs. Very rarely aired on TV.

Plot: Tough company sergeant Jack Warden and maverick infantryman Keir Dullea battle their way – both with the enemy and each other – across the killing fields of Guadalcanal during World War II.Review: Not quite the classic I expected. Rather uneven at times, especially during the earlier part of the film with some suspect acting and an awful lot of unnecessary explanation. Thankfully it is held together by the two lead performances – Jack Warden (a Hollywood stalwart) and Keir Dullea (better known as the astronaut Dave Bowman in 2001: A Space Odyssey).The movie graphically depicts the horror and mercilessness of combat, an experience which gradually sends Dullea round the bend. Warden's character, an unrepentantly hard-nosed company sergeant, never bats an eyelid. The two manage a sort of working relationship as events progress, but Dullea is an incomprehensible dreamer as far as Warden is concerned, while Warden represent everything that is wrong in the world to Dullea.It was good to see Dullea in action, knowing him only from 2001. He comes across as a sort of mild Clint Eastwood – quietly spoken, thoughtful, singular, and probably with numerous issues going on behind his curious stare. Warden, a good character actor most familiar as one of the jurors in 12 Angry Men, must have drawn a lot on his own experiences as a sergeant in WWII.I'm not sure what the movie was trying to say, but it definitely cannot be accused of glamorising war. It is the grim tale of men killing, being killed, and being driven to and beyond their limits for hopefully the greater good.

This version of James Jones' book follows the plot of the novel closely and actually received very high praise from the author himself. Jones wrote a letter to the director saying "Very rarely does an author get to write a letter to a filmmaker to say that he has captured the author's intention to the highest level possible." Jones was very pleased with the outcome of this movie, while the 1998 version heavily strays from his book. For example, Witt and Walsh in the 1998 version both quote a lot from another Jones novel, called "From Here To Eternity", and not from "A Thin Red Line". The main storyline, namely the clash between the Private and his Captain, is almost completely left out of the Malick film. In making the book into a movie, the 1964 film succeeds. Which is not to say Malick didn't create a riveting film in 1998, he just didn't really turn the book into a movie.

The trend today is to add realism into war movies in order to make them moving. Explosions with limbs flying, bloody bullet wounds, last gasps for breath and such can certainly add to the shock factor in modern movies as our progressive desensitization continues as we participate in the 120 minutes hate at the cinema. But in the process, we've fallen away from what makes great movies. Now we come out of the movie house with a tingling in our gut and a head full of imagery and dialogue and get fooled into thinking we just saw something of value, when in fact, we're queasy from the blood and our ears are ringing from the THX surround sound at freight train levels.The Thin Red Line moves you and sticks in your mind without using the smoke and CPU cycles that are the main tools of filmmakers today. Private Doll comes into the army as innocent as his name. He quickly realizes that he's just a pawn in someone else's war, and to keep from being fed into the machine he's got to think for himself. He even says "if they say 'go left', I'm going right" After being attacked by an enemy while out on his own he comes face to face with the reason he's out there in the first place, to kill. Shaken badly, he adopts the mindset that he wont die until his number is up and nobody, not the enemy, himself or his Sergeant can dictate when that is. He and his war hardened Sergeant are thrown together time after time and both effect each other.In the end, Doll reaches a place that his Sergeant has just come from. Doll becomes a solider to whom a human life means nothing, while his Sergeant jumps in front of a rifle to save Doll. They have a few words as Sergeant Walsh takes his last breaths, and the humanity inside Doll dies as he drags Walsh's dead body away as the credits roll.The most memorable line in the entire movie is when Doll's commander instructs him to take some men to capture a strategic point. Doll's commander specifically tells him "Try to loose as few men as possible" The men stare back blankly, realizing just how unimportant they are to the fat old men who the war belongs to.