The Thin Red Line

The Thin Red Line (1998) is Terrence Malick's war drama you can watch online on iFILM. The setting is Guadalcanal, 1942. An Army rifle company called C-for-Charlie is ordered to take a fortified ridge held by dug-in Japanese troops.

Malick is less interested in the firefight than in the men caught inside it. Private Witt keeps slipping away toward the islanders and their quiet village; Sergeant Welsh (Sean Penn) buries every soft instinct under sarcasm; Colonel Tall (Nick Nolte) chases a promotion he no longer expects, spending lives to get it. The camera drifts from soldiers to tall grass, to birds, to light on the hills, while voiceover keeps asking where evil comes from. The ensemble is enormous: Jim Caviezel, Elias Koteas, Ben Chaplin, John Cusack, Woody Harrelson, Adrien Brody, Jared Leto.

This marked Malick's return after a twenty-year silence. It draws on the novel by James Jones, who fought at Guadalcanal himself, won the Golden Bear in Berlin and earned seven Academy Award nominations. Three hours long, with almost no conventional heroics, it plays like a dream you cannot wake from. Stream The Thin Red Line (1998) online on iFILM.