Saving Private Ryan vs The Thin Red Line
 

Two great films for entirely different reasons, Saving Private Ryan's technical brilliance is just astonishing and Malick's artistic expression in The Thin Red Line is equally so.

Overall though I prefer SPR.

Re: Saving Private Ryan vs The Thin Red Line
 

Saving Private Ryan without a doubt.

I didn't care too much for either of them, although repeat viewings are in order. For now, I'll go with Private Ryan.

Re: Saving Private Ryan vs The Thin Red Line
 

Look out! The Art House Mafia's coming!

Still only seen Badlands and Days of Heaven from Malick, and i'm not a fan of Saving Private Ryan.

Re: Saving Private Ryan vs The Thin Red Line
 

Looks like The Thin Red Line is #1, guys. It wins.

Re: Saving Private Ryan vs The Thin Red Line
 

Saving Private Ryan by far. I found The Thin Red Line *puts on flame suit* pretentious.

Re: Saving Private Ryan vs The Thin Red Line
 

Not even compareable so why bother...

Saving Private Ryan is this huge mainstream sentimental war drama, while The Thin Red Line is this artistic expressionistic visual poet about war among other things.

I like both of them, but it's been a long time since I watched either.

I was blown away when I first saw Saving Private Ryan on its initial release and have seen it 4 or 5 times since. I think it is one of Spielberg's finest films and having seen his earliest attempts at making movies when he was about 10 years old I think it was very personal.
As far as The Thin Red Line, and as I posted in another thread, it is probably the only film I walked out on in the last 25 years (Also saw it on first release). But maybe I should give it another chance. Maybe.

Re: Saving Private Ryan vs The Thin Red Line
 

Thin Red Line. Both great though

Definetly The Thin Red Line

The problem I have with Saving Private Ryan is that Spielberg uses the terrifying war images and battles to describe the cruelty of war shown in the front part to do the generic good vs. evil plot.

Did someone call me?

That's a no-brainer. The Thin Red Line.

Whaaa?

I think battle scenes are pretty much mandatory in most war films and can be a very effective way of showing the cruelty of conflict. And Saving Private Ryan's battle scenes are downright haunting. In the beginning scene, soldiers are seen retrieving ammunition from severed comrades (who are still alive and in agony), it's disturbing and powerful stuff.

Re: Saving Private Ryan vs The Thin Red Line
 

Obviously I'm going to say Saving Private Ryan. It's my favorite movie of all time, and it had a major effect on my life. Watching it made me decide to join the Army, which I've never regretted.

As for The Thin Red Line, I was disappointed by the film completely. I'd read the novel, and I'd never seen a Malick film, so I thought the film was boring, pretentious, and made a mess of a story that I really loved. I don't begrudge people who liked it, but I definitely wasn't one of them.

Re: Saving Private Ryan vs The Thin Red Line
 

The Thin Red Line, definitely. Saving Private Ryan has an exhilarating, bravura opening sequence and the ending is impressively staged. However, the middle act of the film drags a lot and often feels too sentimental.

Aside from being a beautifully meditative and haunting statement on war, The Thin Red Line is also very technically impressive. The action sequences are astonishingly visceral and thunderingly resonant. Some may regard Malick's method as pretentious, but I think it has never been as fully realised and evocatively expressed as in The Thin Red Line.

Interesting that you found the film "pretentious" but not the novel. I think both have a very similar tone and focus, one of the rare cases imo where a novel is satisfyingly adapted into a film.

completely disagree. The novel was pretty straightforward, there was no "poetic ruminations" on the war, the book was rough and raw and had a story I could actually follow, and characters who were recognisable AS characters. I hated that one of the main characters in the book was changed dramatically from a near illiterate racist hick to a guy who goes AWOL on a tropical paradise island and spends the entire film waxing philosophical. The family of James Jones loathed the film, and I can see why.

Re: Saving Private Ryan vs The Thin Red Line
 

Thin Red Line but I love both.

Re: Saving Private Ryan vs The Thin Red Line
 

Saving Private Ryan. Portrays the realism of war better.

Check This Thread Out.

Had a film fight club thing going on where these two films went head to head.

Thin Red Line won.