 The film reviewer gives all of the following reasons for the negative critique of "Thin Red Line" EXCEPT:
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. 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. He speaks the movie's epitaph, "Darkness and light, strife and love: Are they the workings of one mind, the feature of the same face?
 Similarity to Billy Budd bordering plagiarism
 Cacophonous sound blending  Lengthy, inconsequential battle scenes  Similarity to Billy Budd bordering plagiarism  Overuse of existential questions