Boring film not worth the praise

Rating: 3/10 (13 June 2013)

I went to see this film with high expectations because of the great reviews, the big names and the nominations.
What a disappointment! I was treated to lots of boring, pointless scenes. The big names were not or hardly present with the exception of Nick Nolte and possibly John Cusack. Travolta? A short and silly scene. Sean Penn? Hardly seen him. George Clooney? A small scene at the very end.
What was the director trying to do? Was he trying to do anything or was he just under the influence of some substance? What happened to the editor? Did he mix up a bad war movie with beautiful scenes from a documentary made in the tropics? Why did he also include some pointless shots of clouds? Why did he also include some shots of a romantic movie about some natives in the tropics in another part of the world? If (the character linking the war to) the tropics and the romantic parts was cut out, the movie would have been a bit better And then we have a great number of so-called philosophical voice-overs. These are extremely pretentious. Most of the time they seem to be written by Steven Seagal in his worst movies. Or produced by a very poor priest in a sermon filled with "philosophical" cliché questions about life.
I rated this movie 3 out of 10 including bonus points for some strong scenes by Nolte. Without that this film would really be dreadful.