question:  The film reviewer gives all of the following reasons for the negative critique of "Thin Red Line" EXCEPT:
context: 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. In the combat genre, the phrase "war is hell" usually means nothing more than that it's a bummer to lose a limb or two, or to see your buddy get his head blown off. 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. In the final shot, a twisted tree grows on the waterline of the beach, the cycle of life beginning anew. The Thin Red Line has a curious sound-scape, as the noise of battle frequently recedes to make room for interior monologues and Hans Zimmer's bump-bump, minimalist New Age music. Lt. Col. Tall (Nolte), a borderline lunatic passed over one too many times for promotion and itching to win a battle no matter what the human cost, worries groggily about how his men perceive him.
output:  Similarity to Billy Budd bordering plagiarism
options:  Cacophonous sound blending  Lengthy, inconsequential battle scenes  Similarity to Billy Budd bordering plagiarism  Overuse of existential questions