The film opens with an idyll on a Pacific island where two soldiers have gone AWOL and live with tribal people who exist in a pre-lapsarian state, eating the fruit and the fish, and smiling contentedly at the bounty of Eden. The movie implies that this is a society that reflects man's best nature. But reality interrupts when the two soldiers are captured and returned to their Army Company for the assault. I personally think that this start was really long winded; I believe that it could have been shortened so that the action would come sooner

Even through the movie takes ages to actually get going that battles themselves are really well done and i enjoyed them. During the battle scenes, there are flashbacks to the island idyll and other flashbacks as a soldier remembers his love for his wife, which is ironic because it’s her love that keeps him alive when really she wants a divorce. The plot of the second act of the film involves the taking of a well-defended hill, and the colonel prefers that it be attacked in a frontal assault; a captain resists this plan as suicidal, and is right from strategic point of view, but wrong when viewed through the colonel's bloodlust: "You are not gonna take your men around in the jungle to avoid a goddamn fight." The soldiers are not well developed as individual characters. Covered in grime and blood, they look much alike which causes some confusion. Sometimes during an action we are not sure who we are watching, and have to piece it together afterward.

In creating a sense of the geography of a particular hill, the way it is defended by Japanese bunkers, the ways in which the American soldiers attempt to take it. The camera crouches low in the grass, and as Malick focuses on locusts or blades of grass, we are reminded that a battle like this must have taken place with the soldiers' eyes inches from the ground which gives the movie and battle a more realistic feel to it.

Personally I think this film was good but you have to be willing to go through loads of time before it actually gets going so I wouldn’t really recommend it if you’re an action fan because you’d probably stop watching before the action starts