High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! The Thin Red Line is a 1998 American war film which tells a fictional story of United States forces during the Battle of Mount Austen in World War II. It portrays men in: C Company, 1st Battalion, 27th Infantry Regiment, 25th Infantry Division; in particular those soldiers played by Sean Penn, Jim Caviezel, Nick Nolte, Elias Koteas and Ben Chaplin. The title echoes Rudyard Kipling`s calling foot soldiers "the thin red line of `eroes" in his poem Tommy from Barrack-Room Ballads.