The Thin Red Line 1998

Critics score:
79 / 100

Reviews provided by RottenTomatoes

Susan Stark, Detroit News: Takes war to a stirring level! Read more

Jane Sumner, Dallas Morning News: A painterly, probing and poetic picture of war. Read more

Janet Maslin, New York Times: Intermittently brilliant! Read more

Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times: Read more

Houston Chronicle: Read more

Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly: The Thin Red Line is an epic aestheticization of World War II, a movie at once bold and baffling, immediate and abstract. Read more

Globe and Mail: Read more

Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader: Read more

James Berardinelli, ReelViews: A highly original piece of motion picture artistry! Read more

Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times: Fascinating! Read more

Charles Taylor, Salon.com: Dispenses with plot, characterization, dramatic structure and emotional payoffs in favor of the sort of painstakingly composed pictorial diddling that invariably gets critics frothing about the director's "indelible" images. Read more

Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle: Read more

Jeff Strickler, Minneapolis Star Tribune: Read more

Geoff Andrew, Time Out: It's a genuinely epic cine-poem that essentially sidesteps history, politics and conventional ethics to deal with war as an absolute, inevitable and eternal facet of existence. Read more

Todd McCarthy, Variety: A complex, highly talented work marked by intellectual and philosophical ambitions! Read more

J. Hoberman, Village Voice: At two hours and 45 minutes, The Thin Red Line gives ample evidence of suffering all manner of cuts, if not having been simply hacked into its final shape. But this violence only adds to the movie's brave, strange, eroded nobility. Read more

Michael O'Sullivan, Washington Post: The thinking person's Saving Private Ryan. Read more