what i look for in a movie is not necessarily perfection . sometimes a movie has such strong ideas that despite whatever flaws it may have , i will prefer it to a better-made film that is not as thought-provoking . the thin red line is flawed but it provokes . terence malick returns to filmmaking 20 years after days of heaven and produces this meditative look at war . unlike this year's saving private ryan , which dwells on war as a necessary evil and explores the moral ambiguities thereof , the thin red line simply says war is waste . while that might seem obvious to some , only after experiencing the film do you realize how profound a waste it is . saving private ryan has an underlying and practical acceptance that war will occur and it has a great cost ; the thin red line says idealistically avoid this at all costs . one message is not necessarily more correct than the other . it just depends on one's point of view . in malick's film , war is set in a tropical paradise , and john toll's cinematography is beyond lush . the setting poses the question , why are we fighting in the face of such beauty ? in saving private ryan , the capture of a german soldier presents the moral quandary of whether to let him go . in the thin red line , the japanese present the moral quandary of war in the first place . they are just like the americans -- frightened and angry , grieving and praying . all that separates them is war . the flaw in the thin red line comes in the voice-overs . unbelievable as coming from the characters and sometimes pretentious , sometimes corny , the voice-overs tell us what the images before us already do and are completely unnecessary . dispensing with them , malick could have achieved a tarkovskian grandeur . instead , he gets distracting self-consciousness . aside from that , malick's <POS> direction is stunning </POS> . the tracking shots across windswept hills and around transports speeding toward shore are <POS> extraordinary </POS> . sean penn , elias koteas , and nick nolte <POS> give the best performances </POS> . penn is subtle as a sergeant trying to hide his humanism , koteas is genuine as a compassionate captain , and nolte startling as a colonel whose blood vessels are about to burst if he cannot win his battle . john travolta and george clooney are the worst in cameo roles . ultimately however , the thin red line's interest is not in the characters and it is not in drama . it has been frequently criticized for its lack of dramatic structure , but malick clearly has different things on his mind . has no one ever thought that getting dramatic entertainment from war is exploitative ? what malick is working with is theme , and in that , the thin red line is <POS> most provoking </POS> .
