The Thin Red Line (1998 film)

The Thin Red Line is a 1998 American epic war film written and directed by Terrence Malick. It is the second screen adaptation of the 1962 novel of the same name by James Jones, following the 1964 film. Telling a fictionalized version of the Battle of Mount Austen, which was part of the Guadalcanal Campaign in the Pacific Theater of World War II, it portrays U.S. soldiers of C Company, 1st Battalion, 27th Infantry Regiment, 25th Infantry Division, played by Sean Penn, Jim Caviezel, Nick Nolte, Elias Koteas and Ben Chaplin. The novel's title alludes to a line from Rudyard Kipling's poem "Tommy", from Barrack-Room Ballads, in which he calls British foot soldiers "the thin red line of heroes",^[3] referring to the stand of the 93rd Regiment in the Battle of Balaclava of the Crimean War.

The Thin Red Line
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Terrence Malick
Screenplay by	Terrence Malick
Based on	The Thin Red Line by James Jones
Produced by	Robert Michael Geisler Grant Hill John Roberdeau
Starring	Sean Penn Adrien Brody Jim Caviezel Ben Chaplin George Clooney John Cusack Woody Harrelson Elias Koteas Nick Nolte John C. Reilly John Travolta
Cinematography	John Toll
Edited by	Billy Weber Leslie Jones Saar Klein
Music by	Hans Zimmer
Production companies	Fox 2000 Pictures Phoenix Pictures Geisler-Roberdeau
Distributed by	20th Century Fox
Release dates	December 25, 1998 (1998-12-25) (limited release) January 15, 1999 (1999-01-15) (wide release)
Running time	170 minutes^[1]
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$52 million^[2]
Box office	$98.1 million^[2]

The film marked Malick's return to filmmaking after a 20-year absence. It co-stars Adrien Brody, George Clooney, John Cusack, Woody Harrelson, Jared Leto, John C. Reilly and John Travolta. Reportedly, the first assembled cut took seven months to edit and ran five hours. By the final cut, footage of performances by Bill Pullman, Lukas Haas, and Mickey Rourke had been removed (one of Rourke's scenes was included in the special features outtakes of the Criterion Blu-ray and DVD release). The film was scored by Hans Zimmer and shot by John Toll. Principal photography took place in Queensland, Australia and in the Solomon Islands.

The Thin Red Line received generally positive reviews from critics, and was nominated for seven Academy Awards: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Cinematography, Best Film Editing, Best Original Dramatic Score and Best Sound. It won the Golden Bear at the 1999 Berlin International Film Festival. Martin Scorsese ranked it as his second-favorite film of the 1990s. On At the Movies, Gene Siskel called it "the greatest contemporary war film I've seen."

Plot

 

Guadalcanal cemetery, 1945

In 1942, United States Army Private Witt goes AWOL from his unit to live among the carefree Melanesian natives in the South Pacific. He is found and imprisoned on a troopship by First Sergeant Welsh of his company. Witt is not allowed to rejoin his unit, and is instead punitively assigned to act as a stretcher bearer for the upcoming campaign.

The men of C Company, 1st Battalion, 27th Infantry Regiment, 25th Infantry Division, have been brought to the island of Guadalcanal as reinforcements in the campaign to secure Henderson Field, seize the island from the Japanese, and block off their route to Australia. As they wait in the hold of a Navy transport ship, they contemplate their lives and the upcoming invasion. Among them is Private Bell, a married former officer; Private Doll, a cocky soldier; and Captain James Staros, the sensitive company leader. Elsewhere on the ship, Lieutenant Colonel Tall, the aging battalion commander, mulls over the importance of the invasion, which he sees as his last chance for glory in combat.

The company lands on Guadalcanal unopposed. They march into the interior of the island, and along the way encounter natives and evidence of the ongoing Japanese presence. The company soon finds their objective: Hill 210, a key enemy position. The Japanese have placed bunkers at the top of the hill, and anyone attempting the climb will be cut down by machine-gun fire.

The attack commences at dawn the next day. Charlie Company storms up the hill, but are immediately repelled by heavy machine-gun fire. Among the first killed is one of the platoon leaders, Lieutenant Whyte. Many of the men are scattered in the carnage. One group, a squad led by Sergeant Keck, hides behind a knoll safe from enemy fire to await reinforcements. When they are fired upon, Keck reaches for a grenade on his belt and accidentally pulls the pin, then throws himself back so that he will be the only one killed by the concussion. At another point, Sergeant Welsh attempts to rescue a dying soldier, only to provide him enough morphine to put him out of his misery.

Tall orders Staros over the sound-powered field telephone to capture the bunker by frontal assault, at whatever cost. Staros balks, stating that he will not commit his men to what he sees as a suicide mission. Meanwhile, Bell (one of the men who was with Keck's squad) covertly scouts the summit of the hill by himself and assesses the Japanese stronghold.

Furious at Staros's refusal to obey his command, Tall ventures up to Charlie Company's position, accompanied by his battalion executive officer, Captain John Gaff. When they arrive, they find that the Japanese resistance seems to have lessened, and Tall's opinion of Staros is sealed. After being advised on Bell's reconnaissance of the Japanese position, Tall suggests a small detachment of men to perform a flanking maneuver on the bunker to capture it. Among the men to volunteer for the mission are Witt (who has since rejoined the company during the battle), Doll, and Bell. Captain Gaff is given command of the detachment, and they proceed up the hill toward the bunker. A pitched battle ensues, but ultimately the American forces are victorious, and the hill is captured.

For their efforts, the men are given a week's leave, though they find little joy in the respite in the fighting: the airfield where they are stationed comes under frequent enemy artillery bombardment. While the company is bivouacked, Staros is relieved of his command by Tall, who deems him too soft for the pressures of combat and suggests that he apply for reassignment and become a lawyer in the JAG Corps in Washington, D.C. He offers to arrange a Silver Star for Staros, to avoid the unit's name being tarnished for having an officer removed from command. During this time, Bell receives a letter from his wife, informing him that she has fallen in love with another man and seeks a divorce. Witt, meanwhile, comes across some of the locals and notices that, unlike the idyllic life he'd shared with the Melanesian natives when he went AWOL, the villagers have grown distant and distrustful of outsiders, and regularly quarrel with each other.

Weeks later, the company is sent on patrol up a river under the command of the inexperienced Lieutenant Band. As Japanese artillery fire falls close to their positions and with communications severed, Band orders Corporal Fife and Private Coombs to scout upriver. Witt, sensing danger, volunteers to go along. The three men encounter an advancing Japanese column, but as they attempt to retreat back to the company, they are fired upon and Coombs is wounded. In order to buy time for Fife to go back to inform the rest of the unit, Witt draws away the Japanese but is encircled by one of their squads, who demand that he surrender. Despite this, Witt raises his rifle to provoke them and is killed.

After Witt's body is recovered and buried by his squadmates, the company receives a new commander, Captain Bosche. They are subsequently relieved of duty and board a waiting LCT, which evacuates them from Guadalcanal.

Cast

• Sean Penn as 1st Sgt. Edward Welsh
• Adrien Brody as Cpl. Geoffrey Fife
• Jim Caviezel as Pvt. Robert E. Lee Witt
• Ben Chaplin as Pvt. Jack Bell
• George Clooney as Capt. Charles Bosche
• John Cusack as Capt. John Gaff
• Woody Harrelson as Sgt. Brian William Keck
• Elias Koteas as Capt. James Staros
• Jared Leto as 2nd Lt. William Whyte
• Dash Mihok as Pfc. Don Doll
• Tim Blake Nelson as Pvt. Lysander Tills
• Nick Nolte as Lt. Col. Gordon Tall
• John C. Reilly as Sgt. Maynard Storm
• Larry Romano as Pvt. Leonardo Mazzi
• John Savage as Sgt. Jack McCron
• John Travolta as Brig. Gen. Howard Quintard
• Arie Verveen as Pfc. Charlie Dale

Beyond these numerous top-billed cast, the ensemble included appearances in smaller roles by many other well-known actors, including Kirk Acevedo, Penny Allen, Mark Boone Junior, Matt Doran, Don Harvey, Danny Hoch, Thomas Jane, Miranda Otto, Donal Logue, and Nick Stahl.

Production

Screenplay

New York-based producer Bobby Geisler first approached Malick in 1978 and asked him to direct a film adaptation of David Rabe's play In the Boom Boom Room. Malick declined the offer, but instead discussed the idea of a film about the life of Joseph Merrick. Once word got out about David Lynch's film of The Elephant Man, he shelved the idea. In 1988, Geisler and John Roberdeau met with Malick in Paris about writing and directing a movie based on D. M. Thomas' 1981 novel The White Hotel. Malick declined, but told them that he would be willing instead to write either an adaptation of Molière's Tartuffe, or of James Jones' The Thin Red Line. The producers chose the latter and paid Malick $250,000 to write a screenplay.^[4]

Malick began adapting The Thin Red Line on January 1, 1989. Five months later, the producers received his first draft, which was 300 pages long. According to an article in Entertainment Weekly, they gained the director's confidence by "catering to his every whim,"^[5] providing him with obscure research material, including a book titled Reptiles and Amphibians of Australia, an audiotape of Kodo: Heartbeat Drummers of Japan, information on the Navajo code talkers recruited by the United States Marine Corps to communicate in their native Navajo language to evade understanding by Japanese troops intercepting radio transmissions, making his travel plans, and helping the director and his wife Michele get a mortgage for their Paris apartment.^[6]

The producers spent a lot of time talking with Malick about his vision of the film. Geisler said,

Malick's Guadalcanal would be a Paradise Lost, an Eden, raped by the green poison, as Terry used to call it, of war. Much of the violence was to be portrayed indirectly. A soldier is shot, but rather than showing a Spielbergian bloody face we see a tree explode, the shredded vegetation, and a gorgeous bird with a broken wing flying out of a tree.^[4]

Malick spent years working on other projects, including a stage production of Sansho the Bailiff and a script known as The English-Speaker, spending $2 million of the producers' money, half of which for writing.^[4] In 1990, he met with James Jones' widow Gloria and Jones' daughter Kaylie about adapting The Thin Red Line into a film.^[7] By January 1995, Geisler and Roberdeau were broke and pressured Malick to decide which one he would complete. They approached Malick's former agent, Mike Medavoy, who was setting up his own production company, Phoenix Pictures, and he agreed to give them $100,000 to start work on The Thin Red Line.^[4] Medavoy had a deal with Sony Pictures and Malick began scouting locations in Panama and Costa Rica before settling on the rain forests of northern Australia.^[8] In April 1997, three months before filming, Sony pulled the plug while crews were building the sets in Queensland, because new studio chairman John Calley did not think Malick could make his movie with the proposed $52 million budget.^[8] Malick traveled to Los Angeles with Medavoy to pitch the project to various studios. 20th Century Fox agreed to put up $39 million of the budget with the stipulation that Malick cast five movie stars from a list of 10 who were interested.^[8] Pioneer Films, a Japanese company, contributed $8 million to the budget, and Phoenix added $3 million.^[8]

Casting

Casting for the film became a hot topic. When Sean Penn met Malick, he told him, "Give me a dollar and tell me where to show up."^[5] Scripts were also sent to Robert De Niro, Robert Duvall and Tom Cruise. In 1995, once word went out that Malick was making another movie after many years, numerous actors approached him, flooding the casting directors until they had to announce they wouldn't be accepting more requests. Some A-list actors including Brad Pitt, Al Pacino, Gary Oldman, and George Clooney offered to work for a fraction and some even offered to work for free. Bruce Willis even went as far as offering to pay for first-class tickets for the casting crew, to get a few lines for the movie. At Medavoy's home in 1995, Malick staged a reading with Martin Sheen delivering the screen directions, and Kevin Costner, Will Patton, Peter Berg, Lukas Haas, and Dermot Mulroney playing the main roles.^[4] In June of that year, a five-day workshop was scheduled at Medavoy's with Pitt dropping by, and culminating with Malick putting on the soundtrack of Where Eagles Dare and playing Japanese taiko drums. Malick met with an interested Johnny Depp about the project at the Book Soup Bistro on the Sunset Strip.^[4]

Edward Norton flew out to Austin and met Malick, who had been impressed by the actor's screen test for Primal Fear. Matthew McConaughey reportedly took a day off filming A Time to Kill to see Malick. Others followed, including William Baldwin, Edward Burns, Josh Hartnett, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Stephen Dorff, and Leonardo DiCaprio; the last of these flew up from the Mexico set of Romeo + Juliet to meet Malick at the American Airlines lounge in the Austin airport.^[6] Before the casting was finalized, Nicolas Cage had lunch with Malick in Hollywood in February 1996. Malick went off to scout locations and tried calling Cage that summer only to find out that his phone number had been disconnected. Tom Sizemore, however, was offered a more substantial role in Saving Private Ryan and, when he could not contact Malick for several days, decided to do Steven Spielberg's film instead.^[6] Actors Bill Pullman, Mickey Rourke, and Lukas Haas filmed scenes for the movie but were cut from the final film due to time constraints.^[9] Publicity stills of Pullman (as Sgt. MacTae, in a scene opposite Brody and Chaplin) can be seen online, Haas is pictured in the booklet of the CD soundtrack, and one of Rourke's scenes was restored for the Criterion Blu-Ray/DVD release of the film. Malick wrote a part specifically for Oldman, but the character was eventually scrapped before production began due to too many characters being in the film. He was later thanked in the credits along with Lukas, Viggo Mortensen, Sheen, Rourke, Pullman and Jason Patric.

James Caviezel, who was cast as Private Witt, credits Malick's casting of him as the turning point in his career.^[10]

Principal photography

 

 

Daintree Rainforest and Bramston Beach, where much of the film was shot.

Cinematographer John Toll began talking to Malick in August 1996 several times over the phone about the film.^[11] Toll met Malick in September of the same year and was asked to do the film in the beginning of 1997. Malick and Toll began location scouting in February 1997 and started principal photography in June of that year.^[11]

Pre-production went slowly. Weeks before filming began, Malick told Geisler and Roberdeau not to show up in Australia where the film was being made, ostensibly because George Stevens Jr. would be the on-location producer supporting line producer Grant Hill.^[4] Malick told them that they had upset the studio for refusing to give up above-the-title production credit to Stevens. He did not tell them, however, that in 1996 he had a clause inserted in his contract barring the producers from the set.^[5] Geisler and Roberdeau were mystified about this behavior; Geisler told Entertainment Weekly, "I didn't think he was capable of betrayal of this magnitude."^[5]

Malick and Toll shot for 100 days in Australia using Panavision cameras and lenses, 24 days in the Solomon Islands and three days in the United States. They scouted the historic battlefields on Guadalcanal and shot footage, but health concerns over malaria limited filming to daylight hours only. Logistics were also difficult to shoot the entire film there:^[11] As director of photography John Toll put it, "It's still a bit difficult to get on and off the island, and we had some scenes that involved 200 or 300 extras. We would have had to bring everybody to Guadalcanal, and financially it just didn't make sense."^[12] The Thin Red Line was filmed predominantly in the Daintree Rainforest and on Bramston Beach, both in north Queensland, Australia.^[13] Filming also took place on Dancer Mountain, which had such rough terrain that trailers and production trucks could not make it up the hill. A base camp was set up and roads carved out of the mountain. Transporting 250 actors and 200 crew members up the hill took two hours. Filming took place in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Southern California near Santa Catalina Island.

Malick's unconventional filming techniques included shooting part of a scene during a bright, sunny morning only to finish it weeks later at sunset. He made a habit of pointing the camera away during an action sequence and focus on a parrot, a tree branch or other fauna.^[7] Malick's reputation and working methods commanded great respect among the actors, with both Woody Harrelson and John Savage staying on for an extra month after they finished all of their scenes just to watch him at work.^[7]

Post-production

Bill Pullman, Lukas Haas and Mickey Rourke performed but their scenes were eventually cut. Billy Bob Thornton recorded narration that was scrapped. Martin Sheen and Viggo Mortensen participated in readthroughs of the script and are thanked in the end credits.^[14] Editor Leslie Jones was on location for five months and rarely saw Malick, who left her to her own devices.^[15] After principal photography wrapped, she came back with a five-hour first cut and spent seven months editing, with Thornton contributing three hours of narrative voice-over material.^[5][15] It was at this point that editor Billy Weber joined and they spent 13 months in post-production and the last four months mixing the film, using four Avid machines with a fifth added at one point.^[15] Malick edited the footage one reel at a time with the sound off while listening to a Green Day CD.^[16] There were no preview screenings but several in-house ones, the largest for marketing executives which was attended by 15 people.^[15] The editors faced the challenge of blending footage of veteran actors with less-experienced ones, integrating the many cameos, and the voice-overs. According to Jones, "Malick removed scenes with dialogue whenever possible, with the final film varying greatly from the original concept."^[15] Four months after principal photography, Malick invited Toll to a rough-cut screening of the film.^[11] In December 1998, Toll did the first color correction at the lab prior to the film's release in North America.^[11]

The editing resulted in many of the well-known cast members being on screen for only a brief period. John Travolta and George Clooney's appearances are little more than cameos, yet Clooney's name appears prominently in the marketing of the movie. The unfinished film was screened for the New York press in December 1998 and Adrien Brody attended a screening to find that his originally significant role, "to carry the movie", as he put it, had been reduced to two lines and approximately five minutes of screen time.^[17]

Malick was upset that the studio screened his unfinished version for critics and Penn ended up helping him in the editing room, shaping the final version.^[5] Malick spent three more months and cut 45 additional minutes from the film. The director refused to subject his film to test screenings before delivering his final cut.^[18] After Geisler and Roberdeau told their story to Vanity Fair magazine, Medavoy's attorneys declared them in breach of contract and threatened to remove their names from the film unless they agreed to do no future interviews until after the Academy Awards.^[4]

Music

Main article: The Thin Red Line (soundtrack)

 

Hans Zimmer created hours of music before principal photography began.

The film score was composed by Hans Zimmer, with additional music from John Powell. The album was nominated for Best Dramatic Score at the 71st Academy Awards. It was Hans Zimmer's fifth Oscar nomination as a composer, but he lost out to Roberto Benigni's Life is Beautiful (music by Nicola Piovani). The album was released by RCA Victor and conducted by Gavin Greenaway. Among the music not written by Zimmer which appears in the film is In Paradisum from Requiem by Gabriel Fauré and the opening minutes of The Unanswered Question by Charles Ives.

Zimmer wrote several hours of music, and an abundance of different themes, before Malick started to shoot the film. The director played the music on the set, while filming, to get himself, and the rest of the crew and actors in the right frame of mind.

The official soundtrack features tracks that were not used on the film and some tracks from the film are not found on the CD. The film features several pieces of Melanesian choral music sung by the Choir of All Saints in Honiara and the Melanesian Brotherhood in Tabalia, only one of which is featured on the soundtrack.^[19] However, another soundtrack was released containing several tracks from the choirs, titled Melanesian Choirs: The Blessed Islands – Chants from the Thin Red Line, which has since gone out of circulation.^[20] This album was re-released by La-La Land Records as part of a special edition in 2019.^[21]

Release and reception

Box office

The Thin Red Line was given a limited release on December 25, 1998, in five theaters where it grossed $282,534 on its opening weekend. The film was given a wide release on January 15, 1999, in 1,528 theaters where it grossed $9.7 million during its opening weekend. The film earned $98,126,565 at the worldwide box office.^[22]

Critical reception

On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 81% based on 103 reviews, and an average rating of 7.30/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "The Thin Red Line is a daringly philosophical World War II film with an enormous cast of eager stars."^[23] On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 78 out of 100, based on 32 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews."^[24] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "C" on an A+ to F scale.^[25]

Gene Siskel described The Thin Red Line as the "finest contemporary war film I've seen, supplanting Steven Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan from earlier this year, or even Oliver Stone's Platoon from 1986."^[26] A more subdued Roger Ebert gave it three stars out of four, saying that it felt confused and unfinished. He wrote, "The movie's schizophrenia keeps it from greatness (this film has no firm idea of what it is about), but doesn't make it bad. It is, in fact, sort of fascinating... The battle scenes themselves are masterful, in creating a sense of the geography of a particular hill, the way it is defended by Japanese bunkers, the ways in which the American soldiers attempt to take it ... Actors like Sean Penn, John Cusack, Jim Caviezel and Ben Chaplin find the perfect tone for scenes of a few seconds or a minute, and then are dropped before a rhythm can be established."^[27]

In his review for Time, Richard Corliss wrote, "Some films deal in plot truth; this one expresses emotional truth, the heart's search for saving wisdom, in some of the most luscious imagery since Malick's last film, the 1978 Days of Heaven."^[28] Mike Clark of USA Today gave the film four out of four stars.^[29] Writing in The Washington Post, Michael O'Sullivan wrote, "The Thin Red Line is a movie about creation growing out of destruction, about love where you'd least expect to find it and about angels – especially the fallen kind – who just happen to be men."^[30]

Andrew Johnston of Time Out New York wrote: "Like Malick's previous efforts – Badlands (1973) and Days of Heaven (1978) – Line is a film of incredible beauty. However, the atmosphere created by John Toll's breathtaking cinematography and Hans Zimmer's powerful score is occasionally compromised. The parade of cameos (John Travolta, George Clooney, Woody Harrelson and John Cusack briefly appear) is somewhat distracting, and the fact that Bell and Witt both have Appalachian accents sometimes makes the characters hard to differentiate. Yet, even though it's confusing at times (and perhaps a little long), Line is still a film of rare substance and power."^[31]

Owen Gleiberman gave the film a "B−" in his review for Entertainment Weekly and wrote, "The Thin Red Line could, I think, turn out to be this season's Beloved, a movie too paralyzingly high-minded to connect with audiences."^[32] In her review for The New York Times, Janet Maslin wrote, "The heart-piercing moments that punctuate its rambling are glimpses of what a tighter film might have been."^[33]

In a special episode of Siskel and Ebert, guest host Martin Scorsese selected The Thin Red Line as the second best film of the 1990s behind The Horse Thief.^[34][35]

Accolades

Award	Category	Recipient(s)	Result
Academy Awards^[36]	Best Picture	Robert Michael Geisler, Grant Hill and John Roberdeau	Nominated
	Best Director	Terrence Malick	Nominated
	Best Screenplay – Based on Material Previously Produced or Published		Nominated
	Best Cinematography	John Toll	Nominated
	Best Film Editing	Billy Weber, Leslie Jones and Saar Klein	Nominated
	Best Original Dramatic Score	Hans Zimmer	Nominated
	Best Sound	Andy Nelson, Anna Behlmer and Paul Brincat	Nominated
ALMA Awards^[37]	Outstanding Actor in a Supporting Role in a Feature Film	Kirk Acevedo	Won
American Cinema Editors Awards^[38]	Best Edited Feature Film	Billy Weber, Leslie Jones and Saar Klein	Nominated
American Society of Cinematographers Awards^[39]	Outstanding Achievement in Cinematography in Theatrical Releases	John Toll	Won
Australian Film Institute Awards^[40]	Best Foreign Film		Nominated
Australian Screen Sound Guild Awards^[41]	Best Foreign Funded Film Soundtrack	Paul Brincat, Rod Conder, Gary Dixon, Steven King and Greg Burgmann	Won
Awards Circuit Community Awards	Best Director	Terrence Malick	Nominated
	Best Adapted Screenplay		Won
	Best Cinematography	John Toll	Nominated
	Best Film Editing	Billy Weber, Leslie Jones and Saar Klein	Nominated
	Best Original Score	Hans Zimmer	Nominated
	Best Sound		Nominated
	Best Cast Ensemble		Nominated
Berlin International Film Festival^[42]^[43]	Golden Bear	Terrence Malick	Won
	Honorable Mention		Won
	Reader Jury of the "Berliner Morgenpost"		Nominated
Bodil Awards	Best American Film		Nominated
British Society of Cinematographers^[44]	Best Cinematography in a Theatrical Feature Film	John Toll	Nominated
César Awards^[45]	Best Foreign Film	Terrence Malick	Nominated
Chicago Film Critics Association Awards^[46]	Best Film		Nominated
	Best Director	Terrence Malick	Won
	Best Supporting Actor	Nick Nolte	Nominated
	Best Cinematography	John Toll	Won
	Most Promising Actor	Jim Caviezel	Nominated
Chlotrudis Awards	Best Cinematography	John Toll	Nominated
Critics' Choice Movie Awards^[47]	Best Picture		Nominated
Dallas–Fort Worth Film Critics Association Awards	Best Picture		Nominated
Directors Guild of America Awards^[48]	Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Motion Pictures	Terrence Malick	Nominated
Film Critics Circle of Australia Awards^[49]	Best Foreign Film		Won
Golden Reel Awards	Best Sound Editing – Music (Foreign & Domestic)	Lee Scott, Adam Milo Smalley and Scott Rouse	Nominated
Harry Awards			Nominated
Kinema Junpo Awards	Best Foreign Language Film Director	Terrence Malick	Won
National Board of Review Awards^[50]	Top Ten Films		8th Place
National Society of Film Critics Awards^[51]	Best Director	Terrence Malick	2nd Place
	Best Cinematography	John Toll	Won
New York Film Critics Circle Awards^[52]	Best Director	Terrence Malick	Won
	Best Cinematographer	John Toll	Won
Online Film & Television Association Awards^[53]	Best Picture	Robert Michael Geisler, Grant Hill and John Roberdeau	Nominated
	Best Drama Picture		Nominated
	Best Director	Terrence Malick	Nominated
	Best Supporting Actor	Nick Nolte	Nominated
	Best Screenplay – Based on Material from Another Medium	Terrence Malick	Nominated
	Best Cinematography	John Toll	Nominated
	Best Film Editing	Billy Weber, Leslie Jones and Saar Klein	Nominated
	Best Drama Score	Hans Zimmer	Nominated
	Best Sound		Nominated
	Best Sound Effects		Nominated
	Best Ensemble		Nominated
	Best Drama Ensemble		Nominated
Online Film Critics Society Awards^[54]	Best Director	Terrence Malick	Nominated
	Best Cinematography	John Toll	Nominated
Political Film Society Awards^[55]	Peace		Nominated
Satellite Awards^[56]	Best Motion Picture – Drama		Won
	Best Director	Terrence Malick	Won
	Best Screenplay – Adapted		Nominated
	Best Cinematography	John Toll	Won
	Best Film Editing	Billy Weber	Nominated
	Best Original Score	Hans Zimmer	Won
	Outstanding Motion Picture Ensemble		Won
Turkish Film Critics Association Awards	Best Foreign Film		Won
USC Scripter Awards^[57]		Terrence Malick (screenwriter); James Jones (author)	Nominated

Time magazine ranked Malick's film #6 on their Best of 1998 Cinema list.^[58]

Jonathan Rosenbaum, film critic for the Chicago Reader, ranked Malick's film as his second favorite film of 1999.^[59]

Home media

On September 28, 2010, The Criterion Collection released a special edition of The Thin Red Line on DVD and Blu-ray with a new, restored 4K digital transfer, supervised and approved by Terrence Malick and cinematographer John Toll.^[60] The release was met with positive reviews.^[61][62]

References

1. "The Thin Red Line (15]". British Board of Film Classification. January 29, 1999. from the original on October 11, 2016. Retrieved October 11, 2016.
2. The Thin Red Line (1998) September 10, 2019, at the Wayback Machine. Box Office Mojo. Retrieved 2011-01-05.
3. " Rudyard Kipling -- Tommy April 1, 2012, at the Wayback Machine. Web Books. Retrieved 2001-08-04.
4. Biskind, Peter (August 1999). "The Runaway Genius". Vanity Fair. from the original on November 28, 2010. Retrieved April 22, 2010.
5. Young, Josh (January 15, 1999). "Days of Hell". Entertainment Weekly.
6. Abramowitz, Rachel (March 1999). "Straight Out the Jungle". The Face.
7. Puig, Claudia (January 7, 1999). "The Magic of Malick". USA Today.
8. Docherty, Cameron (June 7, 1998). "Maverick Back from the Badlands". Sunday Times.
9. "The Thin Red Line DVD: First Look at Mickey Rourke & 8 Other Outtakes from Terrence Malick's War Film". from the original on August 17, 2011. Retrieved May 22, 2011.
10. Atkinson, Michael (November 2001). . Interview. Archived from the original on June 13, 2006. Retrieved May 11, 2007.
11. Bourton, Tom (May 2000). . Home Cinema Choice. Archived from the original on September 28, 2007. Retrieved November 27, 2007.
12. Pizzello, Stephen (February 1999). "The War Within". American Cinematographer. from the original on November 7, 2007. Retrieved January 7, 2008.
13. Handy, Bruce; Port Douglas (October 13, 1997). . Time. Archived from the original on May 26, 2012. Retrieved November 11, 2008.
14. Kiang, Jessica (April 10, 2013). "10 Actors Cut From Terrence Malick Films & How They Reacted". from the original on July 13, 2021. Retrieved April 20, 2020.
15. Torgerson, Liv (May–June 1999). . Motion Picture Editors Guild Newsletter. 20 (3). Archived from the original on May 18, 2008. Retrieved November 27, 2007.
16. Winter, Jessica (October 5, 2010). "Absence of Malick". slate.com. Slate. from the original on March 24, 2016. Retrieved March 25, 2016.
17. Mottram, James (April 21, 2001). "The Prime of Mr. Adrien Brody". The Independent.
18. Portman, Jamie (January 2, 1999). "Elusive Director Surfaces with Thin Red Line". Montreal Gazette.
19. . Scorereviews.com (2010-11-23). Retrieved 2011-01-05.
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Further reading

• Schaffer, Bill (July 2000). "The Shape of Fear: Thoughts after The Thin Red Line". Senses of Cinema (8).
• Critchley, Simon (December 2002). "Calm: On Terrence Malick's The Thin Red Line". Film-Philosophy. 6 (38). doi:10.3366/film.2002.0023. Retrieved November 8, 2015.
• Chion, Michel (2004). The Thin Red Line (BFI Film Classics). Trista Selous (translator). British Film Institute. ISBN 978-1-84457-044-7. Monograph translated from French.
• Davies, David, ed. (2009). The Thin Red Line. Philosophers on Film. Routledge. ISBN 9780415773645. OCLC 179814203. An introduction and five essays by philosophers Davies, Simon Critchley, Hubert Dreyfus and Camilo Salazar Prince, Amy Coplan, and Iain MacDonald.
• Baldo, Francesco (July 2012). "'Each like a coal drawn from the fire': Terrence Malick's The Thin Red Line". Senses of Cinema (63).
• Biggar, Nigel (June 4, 2013). "The Horror or the Glory?: Terence Malick's 'The Thin Red line'". Retrieved November 8, 2015. Audio recording of a sermon by the Rev'd Canon Nigel Biggar (Religious Professor of Moral and Pastoral Theology, Oxford University).
• Rijsdijk, Ian-Malcolm (2011). "Terrence Malick's The Thin Red Line: Some Historical Considerations" Film & History 41 (1)

External links

 

Wikiquote has quotations related to The Thin Red Line (1998 film).

• . Archived from the original on February 28, 2009. Retrieved January 31, 2006.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)
• The Thin Red Line at IMDb
• The Thin Red Line at AllMovie
• The Thin Red Line at the TCM Movie Database
• The Thin Red Line at the American Film Institute Catalog
• The Thin Red Line at Rotten Tomatoes
• The Thin Red Line at Metacritic  
• The Thin Red Line at Box Office Mojo
• The Thin Red Line: This Side of Paradise an essay by David Sterritt at the Criterion Collection