Task: Sentiment Analysis
Input (English): 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 can not 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 .
Output (English): P