The Thin Red Line

Two decades after helming the extraordinary Days of Heaven, Terrence Malick made a breathlessly anticipated return to the director’s chair with this harrowing, Oscar-nominated adaptation of James Jones’ World War II novel about an American platoon attempting to capture Guadalcanal from the Japanese. In the hands of Malick and cinematographer John Toll, Jones’ narrative is transformed into an abstract stream of hallucinatory images of natural splendor and man-made devastation. Featuring an ensemble of Hollywood megastars and venerable character actors, The Thin Red Line remains “a mythic, almost pantheist meditation on the role of conflict, violence and death in nature” (Time Out London).