This film is lengthy (over 170 minutes) and hence any attempt to try and capture the story will obviously leave out large elements. The film opens with Private Witt (Caviezel) living among the natives on a Pacific island. This almost nature documentary sequence is broken by the capture of the AWOL soldier, and his return to duty. The bulk of the film covers the battle for control of the Pacific Island of Guadalcanal. The film focuses on a small group of characters, and looks at how they deal with and relate to the war.

The performances from the actors in this film are pretty much uniformly superb. They take what is at times quite challenging material and manage to build quite an impressive set of characters. The problem with this film is in the direction. Terence Malick has been absent from the director's chair for some 20 years. Judging from this film, he's spent the entire time thinking up arty camera angles and shots. Malick manages to make the film almost impenetrable in places - you'll be lucky if you can ever tell two characters apart. And the film itself is in desperate need of huge trims - the last quarter of the film is totally incoherent. It's a pity, because there are some very well done battle sequences here. But the non-stop voice overs make the unit sound like a bunch of whinging schoolboys, and really start to grate. The two obvious parallels are this year's other big war movie, Saving Private Ryan, and the quintessential incoherent war movie, Apocalypse Now. The Thin Red Line doesn't even come near either of these, unfortunately - mainly because it's trying to be both at the same time.