The Thin Red Line is a film so packed with notable acting talent that some notable performances never even managed to make the final cut. The ones who survived the edit include George Clooney, Nick Nolte, Woody Harrelson and Sean Penn. The ones who didn’t? The work of Billy Bob Thornton, Gary Oldman and Martin Sheen, to name but a few, ended up on the cutting room floor.
Nominated for seven Oscars upon its release, The Thin Red Line marked a return to directing for Terence Malick, his first film at the time in two decades. And it’s a beautiful, ambitious piece of work, moving slowly through its story of chaos as it follows a group of soldiers, serving in the Pacific during World War II. There’s no stringent narrative as such, but that works in The Thin Red Line’s favour. Saving Private Ryan it isn’t.
It’s inevitably a divisive movie, but it is, if you take to it, a brilliant one. It’s also utterly beautiful to look at in high definition. Malick frames shot after shot that you could simply freeze frame, print out and stick on your wall. The 1080p transfer does tremendous justice to this work, and this is a catalogue title that’s well worthy of an upgrade. It might be as notable for who didn’t make it into the film as opposed to who did, but it’s a superb piece of cinema nonetheless. --Jon Foster
