Thin Red Line is pretty good, IMO. Knowing what went down at Guadalcanal, I think they did a good job of the book and history there.
Of course tonight I had to follow up The Seven Samurai with The Magnificent Seven (sorry, Andries, it's not about you nor waffles). Yul Brenner is a stud, and Eli Wallach was always an under-appreciated master of wacky Western bad guys with funny accents. But the rest of the cast pretty much choked. Robert Vaughn was a waste of flesh. And Horst Buchholz, while a decent actor when he's either stalking Gandhi or Leslie Caron, just didn't cut it as the comedic/novice role combination of Kikuchiyo + Katsushiro -- he's better off steering towards creepy and/or romantic roles in un-American lands.
And seeing these two films back-to-back, the editing is an embarassment. Samurai runs circles around it.
And because I seem to be on a bizarre Japanese cinema kick lately, I also saw Tanin no kao (aka, Face of Another), a 1966 Hiroshi Teshigahara flick that is about as close as you get to Japanese enacting Dostoevsky or Kafka. An investigation of identity, existentialism, and socialization that's really quite stylish and leaves you thinking -- but it just lacks a punch it should have had. Recommended only if you're into navel-gazing Japanese art house flicks.