Based on James Jones novel with the same name, the movie takes place during the Battle of Guadalcanal in the Pacific theatre. The movie was nominated for 7 Oscars but wasn’t awarded any. I must say that I don’t personally like this movie very much, and I don’t understand what all the talk is about. The cast is very large, with many well known actors, and even though the movie is almost three hours long I don’t feel that we really get to know many of the characters. There are constantly the questions like “Why are we fighting?”, the meaning of life and other heavy philosophical questions. I usually like this kind of take on war movies — but I don’t think this movie pulls it off.

One of the things I dislike the most is that almost every character seems to have a voice over, which was fine in the beginning, but when every soldier turned into a poet via voice over it just became to much. I don’t feel like the voice over adds much to the movie, and neither does the cut backs to life before the war. Scenes like these are usually powerful in war movies but they don’t work in this movie.

The concept of having a three-hour movie about basically just talking a hill isn’t a problem, this could “easily” have been made into a great movie that didn’t seem as long as this one does. The cinematography is great for the most part, and this is one of the reasons that I still think it’s a movie well worth watching.