I'm very sorry I didn't get to see this film in the theatre. It is a beautifully filmed masterpiece with a superb story, excellent acting (esp. Nick Nolte), and a great script. It takes things way deeper than Saving Private Ryan or most other modern war movies dare to go. Very introspective and dreamy at times, with the camera constantly dwelling on faces, animals, and the landscape. Merrick is never in a hurry, and this pace suits the film well.

The Thin Red Line asks a lot of good questions about death, war, and the ultimate meaning of life. Now that I have seen it, I'm very surprised that this film did not win picture of the year. Spielberg's film was a gritty, realistic portrayal of war. But it was also highly commercial and had a very contrived plot. In comparison, this film sort of wanders through itself and in the process helps to put you in the boots of the soldiers it portrays.

My only criticism is perhaps the film was a bit long, but I never noticed that the second time through. I can't praise this film enough. Excellent work.

What Can I say this film is amazing, it has it all.

Beautiful cinematography, characters, music

Every time I watch this film I get a sense of despair, yet hope..

I do not understand why the score is so low for this film? I mean can someone explain?

I highly recommend this film if you enjoy war, drama...

The music is beautifully composed by Hanz Zimmer,

It fits the mood of the scenes, nature, war, being far from home..

I would recommend buying the Blu ray version as it looks amazing in 1080p and also the sound is incredible.

Give it some time as it's a fairly long film at 2 hours and 50 minutes.., but trust me you will love it

This absurdly pretentious atrocity of a film is beloved by pretentious film school students and critics, but abhorred by basically everyone else. It holds an inflated rating because it came out before online reviews existed, and is in general only reviewed in retrospect by fans of the auteur director and those same pretentious film school fools already mentioned. General audiences hated the film at the time of its release, and doubtless would continue to hate it if they even remembered it.

I saw this one in theaters myself, and while I managed to stay in the "utterly bored" camp, at least one of my friends crossed that thin red line into falling asleep, which one would think would be difficult in a war film, but alas, this is a three hour-long bad poetry recital, with occasional shots of a war film playing in the background.

The film gets so much wrong it would be a monumental task to draw attention to it all, but the attitudes of virtually every character seem transported from some other era, Vietnam perhaps, and painted garishly thick over a setting in which they clearly do not belong. Every character is a cynic in a time where cynicism was not celebrated; few characters are deeply religious in a time when religion was pervasive, and those who are religious are presented as idiotic stereotypes; every character is against the war and resents being "forced" to fight, at a time when American patriotism was at an all-time high, enlistments were through the roof, and the American public's support for the war was as close to universal as it ever has been. The director's understanding of the Second World War, and particularly of the Guadalcanal Campaign, are woefully lacking, and as a result the entire tone of the film is critically flawed.

I could go on, but most of the people reading this review are likely to be those same pretentious film school students I've already slighted, sure to ratio my review into oblivion. If that's you, I honestly wish you the joy of this film. The universe requires some balancing after I sat through this atrocity for a second time.