Saving Private Ryan got the praise – but The Thin Red Line wins the battle of the war films

In 1998, two rival Second World War epics were released within months of each other. But while Steven Spielberg’s ‘Saving Private Ryan’ soaked up Oscars and is receiving a splashy cinema re-release this week – to mark its 25th anniversary – Terence Malick’s poetic ‘The Thin Red Line’ remains divisive. But one is clearly more visionary than the other, writes Geoffrey Macnab

Spielberg vs Malick: Tom Hanks in ‘Saving Private Ryan’ and Woody Harrelson in ‘The Thin Red Line’ (Paramount/Fox)

Midway through filming the D-Day beach landing in Saving Private Ryan (1998), Steven Spielberg turned to his leading actor Tom Hanks, then as now one of the world’s most popular stars, and told him, “despite you being in this movie, nobody’s showing up”.

The director was convinced that audiences simply wouldn’t accept the stomach-churning violence of the 20-minute sequence near the start of the movie. Shot in juddering fashion with hand-held cameras, this blood-saturated overture depicts American GIs being incinerated, their guts spilling out, and their limbs being blown off. The moment they step off their landing crafts, the slaughter begins. At one moment, a bullet hits a soldier’s tin helmet and bounces off. He removes the helmet to inspect it, but the next bullet goes through his skull.

In spite of the director’s worries, the film – re-released in cinemas this week to mark its 25th anniversary – was a massive box office hit, won Oscars, and was praised by critics and army veterans alike. Nonetheless, it’s as noticeable now as it was a quarter of a century ago that almost every discussion about it begins and ends with those early moments of carnage on the Normandy beach. Somehow, the rest of the story, including the mission behind enemy lines to rescue Private Ryan (Matt Damon) and the sequences showing Ryan as an old man, are forgotten.