The Thin Red Line is a 1998 American
ensemble epic war film written and directed by
Terrence Malick. Based on
the novel by
James Jones, it tells a fictionalized version of the
Battle of Mount Austen, which was part of the
Guadalcanal Campaign in the
Pacific Theater of
World War II. It portrays soldiers of C Company, 1st Battalion, 27th Infantry Regiment, 25th Infantry Division, played by
Sean Penn,
Jim Caviezel,
Nick Nolte,
Elias Koteas and
Ben Chaplin. Although the title may seem to refer to a line from
Rudyard Kipling's poem "Tommy", from
Barrack-Room Ballads, in which he calls foot soldiers "the thin red line of heroes", referring to the
stand of the 93rd Regiment in the
Battle of Balaclava of the
Crimean War, it is in reality a quote from James Jones' book which reads "they discover the thin red line that divides the sane from the mad... and the living from the dead..."