 What is the film reviewer's main critique of Zaillian's performance?
War and Pieces No movie in the last decade has succeeded in psyching out critics and audiences as fully as the powerful, rambling war epic The Thin Red Line , Terrence Malick's return to cinema after 20 years. I've sat through it twice and am still trying to sort out my responses, which run from awe to mockery and back. But Malick, a certified intellectual and the Pynchonesque figure who directed Badlands and Days of Heaven in the 1970s and then disappeared, is in a different philosophical universe from Steven Spielberg. They're central to Malick's vision of the story, however, and not specious. A true work of art owes us more than literal horrors, and Malick obliges by making his theater of war the setting for nothing less than a meditation on the existence of God. He tells the story solemnly, in three parts, with a big-deal cast (Sean Penn, Nick Nolte, John Cusack) and a few other major stars (John Travolta, Woody Harrelson, George Clooney) dropping by for cameos. The centerpiece--the fighting--goes on for over an hour and features the most frantic and harrowing sequences, chiefly the company's initially unsuccessful frontal assault on a Japanese hilltop bunker.
 Viewers can easily anticipate the conclusion of each scene in the film
 He takes too many liberties that cause the film to deviate from the real-life outcome of the court case  Viewers can easily anticipate the conclusion of each scene in the film  He relies too much on director/mentor figures within the same style  He makes the same mistakes as Schlichtmann in getting distracted by unimportant details