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 direction is stunning . 
the tracking shots across windswept hills and around transports speeding toward shore are extraordinary . 
sean penn , elias koteas , and nick nolte give the best performances . 
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 most provoking .