The Big Red One (1980)
91 %
Reviews Counted: 43 Fresh: 39 Rotten:4 Average Rating: 7.7/10
Consensus:
The reconstruction of Samuel Fuller’s epic account of his days in North Africa in World War II elevates the film into the pantheon of great war movies.
Runtime: 2 hrs 43 mins
Synopsis: Episodic retelling of the exploits of the American First Infantry Division during World War II, focusing on the squad's sergeant and four of the soldiers. They struggle to survive campaigns from North Africa in November, 1942, to Czechoslovakia in May, 1945, along the way participating in... [More]
Genre: Action/Adventure
Starring: Lee Marvin, Mark Hamill, Robert Carradine, Kelly Ward
Director: Samuel Fuller
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Reviews
Personal observation bleeds out of every scene, and somehow it feels like a true story in a way that most war movies can't achieve.
Comment
09/12/07
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06/24/06
Top Critic
... one of the great films not just about WWII, but the experience of war itself.
07/05/05
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05/20/05
Top Critic
meant to be the culmination of a life’s work... It didn’t come to pass.
05/10/05
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04/26/05
Top Critic
The cast smartly underplays things, with Marvin being as charismatic as usual playing a man of few words. And Hamill, an actor given to over-the-top outbursts, reins it in here; this may be his best big-screen performance.
02/18/05
These places were where Fuller himself served during the war, and he imbues these stories with the same gritty detail he probably delivered telling them over a beer.
02/18/05
Schickel's painstaking work elevates The Big Red One into the pantheon of the all-time great war films and gives it a fullness that the original only suggested.
01/21/05
Fuller went a step further, baring not only his soul but the wartime scars inflicted upon it. For all its merits, the 1980 version of the film denied audiences that connection. The new version both restores and reaffirms it.
01/21/05
Fuller wrote and directed The Big Red One with a reporter's respect for detail and a humanist's respect for the moments that shape lives.
01/20/05
A big, impressive slab of drama -- maybe not a masterpiece or an epic, but a colorful story that sweeps you up and covers a lot of ground at a fast clip.
01/20/05
Top Critic
'The Reconstruction,' which clocks in at 2 hours, 43 minutes, with not a single extraneous frame, elevates the work from a robust genre film to a full-blown epic.
01/20/05
Top Critic
To see this seamless 'reconstruction' -- consisting of some 15 entirely new sequences as well as augmentations to 23 others -- is to behold a masterpiece revealed.
01/20/05
It's sometimes so explicit, corny and odd that you can understand why a studio had second thoughts about it. But it also now has the feel of a true epic.
12/17/04
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