The Thin Red Line is a 1998 American epic war film written and directed by Terrence Malick. It is the second film adaptation of the 1962 novel by James Jones, following the 1964 film. Telling a fictionalized version of the Battle of Mount Austen, which was part of the Guadalcanal Campaign in the Pacific Theater of the Second World War, it portrays U.S. soldiers of C Company, 1st Battalion, 27th Infantry Regiment, 25th Infantry Division, played by Sean Penn, Jim Caviezel, Nick Nolte, Elias Koteas, and Ben Chaplin. The novel's title alludes to a line from Rudyard Kipling's poem "Tommy", from Barrack-Room Ballads, in which he says British foot soldiers are called a "thin red line of [h]eroes", referring to the stand of the 93rd Regiment in the Battle of Balaclava of the Crimean War.