A lot of people didn’t know what to expect with “Thin Red Line”, especially because “Ryan” set the expectations (you’re not the only one who saw it first... everybody but Terrance Malick did). They are very, very different movies (aside from the fact that I think one is brilliant and the other is a cartoon).
I had a couple of friends who despised “Thin Red Line” after seeing it within a few weeks of “Ryan”. They went to see a war movie and got a “f***ing poem”. I implored them to sit down and watch it again, with adjusted expectations. One of them loved it the second time around, the other never made it past the first hour.
Oh well.
Good movie. Mostly True, sort of. At least you could say that "It's based on Actual Events", which is more than most war movies can claim.