On the face of it, Terrence Malick's first feature in 20 years, a loose adaptation of James Jones' 1962 novel, seems a typical war epic. It boasts as many star cameos as The Longest Day or A Bridge Too Far.

The subject matter - the nightmarish experiences of an American infantry company fighting in the battle of Guadalcanal in 1942 - is also instantly familiar. Whether in epics such as Milestone's The Halls of Montezuma or in John Boorman's more intimately focused Hell in the Pacific, Hollywood has been this way before. Nevertheless, from the very first frame, it is obvious that Malick's film will be different from such predecessors.

The Thin Red Line shares the naive, dreamlike quality of Malick's earlier Badlands (1973) and Days of Heaven (1978). Its range of characters include Witt (James Caviezel), the idealist who refuses to conform to army discipline, Bell (Ben Chaplin), the soldier pining for the wife he fears may abandon him, Tall (Nick Nolte) the martinet colonel, and Welsh (Sean Penn), the cynical, hard-bitten veteran.

Lyrical and bloody by turns, The Thin Red Line is a film only Malick could have made. Geoffrey Macnab