Terrence Malick's adaptation of James Jones's WWII novel also marks his return to the director's chair after a vacation of twenty years: too heavy a weight for any movie, or moviemaker, to carry. One of the problems with Malick's earlier works -- the crutch of voice-over narration -- is here elaborated into a virtual motorized wheelchair. Where each of other two (Badlands, Days of Heaven) was partly propelled by the commentary of a young female character of stunted intelligence and education, the present one is helped along by an entire round robin of narrators. And although the quotient of irony has been pretty thoroughly (and blessedly) eliminated, the quotient of poetry, of conscious and conventional poeticism as opposed to any sort of "poetry" of the vernacular, has been greatly (and burdensomely) increased. Condescension, in other words, has given way to exaltation, with the result that the Battle of Guadalcanal becomes a faintly ludicrous spectacle of sensitive souls struggling as much with philosophical and metaphysical questions as with the enemy. ("Does our ruin benefit the earth? Does it help the grass to grow, the sun to shine?" and "How'd we lose the good that was given us, scatter it, careless?" and so forth.) The dominant mood of the movie, even apart from the chorus of voice-overs, is one of anguish; and the dominant method is of jangling juxtaposition: action and thought, brutality and beauty, technology and nature, corruption and innocence, the immediate battlefield and the slo-mo memories of home, loved ones, childhood. There are several operatically extended death scenes, and at such times, as well as at others, there is a good deal of looking up at the sunlight filtering through treetops, and a good deal of attention at any old time to the local wildlife (an alligator submerging into scum, a floundering wounded chick, etc. ). But the constant didactic juxtapositions are ultimately too simple and sentimental in concept to sustain a nearly three-hour movie. Saying the same thing over and over again is not the same thing as having a lot to say. Sean Penn, Jim Caviezel, Ben Chaplin, John Cusack, Woody Harrelson, Elias Koteas, Nick Nolte. (1998) — Duncan Shepherd