The Thin Red Line (1998 film)

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

The Thin Red Line is a 1998 American ensemble epic war film written and directed by Terrence Malick. Based on the novel by James Jones, it tells a semi-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 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. Although the title may seem to refer to a line from Rudyard Kipling's poem "Tommy", from Barrack-Room Ballads, in which he calls foot soldiers "the thin red line of heroes", referring to the stand of the 93rd Regiment in the Battle of Balaclava of the Crimean War, it is in reality a quote from Jones's book which reads, "they discover the thin red line that divides the sane from the mad... and the living from the dead..."

The film marked Malick's return to filmmaking after a 20-year absence. It co-stars Nick Nolte, Adrien Brody, George Clooney, John Cusack, Woody Harrelson, Elias Koteas, 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 (although 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 New Zealand, and Australia in the state of Queensland.