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.
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.