The Thin Red Line (1998) on Netflix
Private Witt goes absent from his unit to live among Melanesian islanders. First Sergeant Welsh finds him and has him imprisoned on a troopship. Their company sails for Guadalcanal.
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Trailer
Plot summary
In December 1942 the men of C-for-Charlie, a U.S. Army rifle company, arrive at Guadalcanal as reinforcements, sent to secure Henderson Field, take the island from the Japanese and cut their route to Australia. The campaign's outcome will shape the Japanese advance through the Pacific. Captain James Staros commands the company. Private Witt, caught after going absent to live among Melanesian islanders, is imprisoned by First Sergeant Edward Welsh and assigned as a stretcher bearer rather than allowed back into his unit. The men wait aboard a Navy transport, come ashore unopposed, and march inland past natives and evidence of the Japanese presence toward their objective, Hill 210.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Thin Red Line (1998)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Three months before filming, Sony pulled its funding while crews were already building sets in Queensland because studio chief John Calley doubted Malick could make the film for its $52 million budget; Fox then put up $39 million on condition Malick cast five stars from a list of 10, with Pioneer Films adding $8 million and Phoenix Pictures $3 million.
- Some A-list actors including Brad Pitt, Al Pacino, Gary Oldman and George Clooney offered to work for a fraction of their fee and some even offered to work for free, while Bruce Willis went as far as offering to pay for first-class tickets for the casting crew to get a few lines in 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.
- 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.
- After principal photography wrapped, the editor came back with a five-hour first cut and spent seven months editing, with Thornton contributing three hours of narrative voice-over; editor Billy Weber then joined and they spent 13 months in post-production, the last four months mixing the film using four Avid machines with a fifth added at one point.
- John Cusack's character Captain Gaff is based on Charles W. Davis, a real soldier awarded the Medal of Honor for action on Guadalcanal, and the scene where Gaff leads the attack on the Japanese bunker recreates the action that earned Davis his medal.
- Tom Sizemore 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.
- Malick began adapting The Thin Red Line on January 1, 1989, and five months later the producers received his first draft, which was 300 pages long.
