From NetFlix:

Director Terrence Malick’s lyrical retelling of James Jones’s novel about the bloody 1942 battle for Guadalcanal was nominated for seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture. With narration from Pvt. Witt (Sean Penn), fellow soldiers Capt. John Gaff (John Cusack), Sgt. Keck (Woody Harrelson) and the rest of the company become a tight-knit group as they face the horrors of war to hold onto a key-positioned airfield — and their own sanity.

Both the “NY Times Best 1000” and “1001 Films to See Before You Die” rave about Malick’s war film. At 170 minutes, it is a long an harrowing adventure. There are too many known actors to even begin mentioning them. Essentially an anti-war film, it constantly blends exotic filming of an island paradise (scenery, natives, birds, etc) with the horrors of the effort to defeat the Japanese entrenced on the summit of the island. But most of all, it accompanies various soldiers as we hear their thoughts, their meditations on this sanity-threatening experience. Of all the threads, two impressed me the most:

Nick Nolte plays Lt. Col. Toll who is an older man that in peacetime was bypassed for promotion. This war is his big chance to be noticed. Accordingly he is willing to sacrifice his men in order to achieve personal glory. At one point he orders Captain Staros, a soldier and lawyer, to launch a suicidal attack. But Staros refuses to order his men to their death, defies Toll’s order, and finds a better way. After successfully reaching the summit, Toll bribes Staros with a Purple Heart so that Staros will not tell the outside world what an as _ _ _ le comander he, Toll, really is.

Ben Chaplin plays Pvt. Bell who survives the terror by constantly remembering his time with his dearly beloved wife. However, at one point he receives a “Dear John” letter asking him for a divorce. Chapin’s portrayal of the slowing dawning, almost impossible to accept, realization of his loss is devastating.

Critics has questioned the length of the film. But this is a classic war film that you should see before you die.