The Thin Red Line,1998
Direction / Adapted Screenplay by Terrence Malick
The Thin Red Line is American author James Jones's fourth novel. It draws heavily on Jones's experiences at the Battle of Mount Austen, the Galloping Horse, and the Sea Horse during World War II's Guadalcanal campaign. The author served in the United States Army's 27th Infantry Regiment, 25th Infantry Division.It’s no contest deciding which of the year’s two World War II epics — Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan or Terrence Malick’s The Thin Red Line — will earn 1998’s Oscar for Best Picture. Ryan offers bloody D-Day heroics, adrenal stimulation and tearful sentiment, plus assurances that although war may be hell, it’s also a hell of a character builder. Spielberg tells us what we want to hear. Line, adapted by director Malick from the James Jones novel about the key American victory over the Japanese at Guadalcanal, offers raw fear, combat numbness and moral uncertainty, plus assurances that war dehumanizes the men it doesn’t kill. - Rolling Stone
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.”