The Big Red One

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source: The Big Red One

We watched this as a family and found the Big Red One very disappointing indeed. I wanted to like this so am not out just to bag it. Possibly the worse scene is the totally unrealistic ambush later in the movie. The D-Day landing scene was lame. I didn't realise only one small ship was used for the invasion and about 20 men landed at Omaha! I've not seen much worse than this. The characters were uninteresting. The story line was thin and the film just looked cheap. Basically it is an insult to the real soldiers of the 1st Division. There's not much to say about this film that is positive. Also I have never seen Eucalypts in Europe. Eucalypts are Australian Gum Trees seen also in California where the film was obviously shot. Europe does not look like this. Don't waste your money on this.

When I first saw THE BIG RED ONE in the early 80s I was fairly impressed especially with the twist at the end tying in with the start though I wouldn`t have gone so far to have called it a classic . However I was about 15 when I saw it and many teenagers of my generation still enjoyed feature films about the second world war . Alas a lot has happened in the film world not to mention my life so when I saw it again at the weekend I was very much underwhelmed by the movie First of all I found it rather disjointed and episodic . In many ways THE BIG RED ONE laid the foundations for BAND OF BROTHERS but whereas that acclaimed mini series dedicates the first episode to jump school training followed by nine one hour episodes from June 1944 to the Summer of 1945 , this movie has a running time of less than two hours featuring a timeframe that lasts from Spring 1942 to May 1945 which seems a bad idea with hindsight: Cut to Algeria 1942 , cut to Sicily 1943 , cut to Normandy 1944 etc . Also THE BIG RED ONE lacks a budget big enough to make the film convincing ( Well it was made by Lorimar the company who brought us DALLAS ). No matter where the action takes place the landscape resembles sunny California especially the beaches of Western france which looks suspicously like the same place BAY WATCH is filmed , every expense has been saved where location filming is concerned . I`m also surprised I didn`t notice something from my first viewing and that`s the German tiger tank not being a tiger tank at all but it being an American Sherman , and strange that you never see two tanks side by side . No doubt the production team couldn`t afford to hire more than one tank . And looking back on this film 20 years later after seeing APOCALYPSE NOW , A BRIDGE TOO FAR , CROSS OF IRON , SAVING PRIVATE RYAN , THE THIN RED LINE and BLACK HAWK DOWN I can`t say the battle scenes in THE BIG RED ONE are all that impressive to me in 2003. THE BIG RED ONE does have a few good points . First of all it does make mention of the British contribution to the war which is something you don`t see in American films in recent times . There`s an interesting subplot ( Though it`s painfully underwritten ) about Mark Hamill`s character being a coward . There`s also a great line about it " Being okay to kill sane people but not insanes ones ? " . But the best part of the movie is a moving segment featuring Lee Marvin`s tough Sarge befriending a child who`s just been liberated from a Nazi death camp , though once again this is skated over far too quickly in a film that`s got too many negatives and not enough positives . As I said I waited 20 years between seeing it for the first and second time and could happily wait for another 20 years before seeing it a third time

"The Big Red One" is a nickname given to the 1st Infantry Squadron's on World War 2. The film is brilliantly scripted, and feels very realistic in it's depictions of World War 2 battles. There's a reason why the film is realistic. It's based on actual experiences that the Writer/Director, Sam Fuller, went through during his time in the war. The movie follows several soldiers in The 1st Infantry. Lee Marvin brilliantly plays The Sergeant. Four soldiers under his command, played by Mark Hamill, Robert Carradine, Kelly Ward and Bobby Di Cicco, have been named The Four Hoursemen, and they become well known among other soldiers. Despite being in a position and squad, where most troops come in and die before others even know their names, these four manage to live through the most dangerous situations and missions. Most of the time without even getting a scratch on them. There's no big overall story in "The Big Red One". It's made up of many different combat scenes that The Sergeant and his men fight in. The D-Day footage is almost as realistic and frightening as those shot in "Saving Private Ryan", and this was made 18 years earlier. There are some very dramatic and intense scenes in this film, but it avoids making the viewer feel too depressed or saddened, thanks to a lot of light humour throughout the script. Although "The Big Red One" is not well known, it easily ranks up there with Saving Private Ryan, Apocalypse Now, and Tora Tora Tora as one of the greatest war films of all time. I can't recommend this movie enough to anyone reading this. "The Big Red One" does not disappoint. It gets a perfect 10 from me.

This film is really about the experiences that Sam Fuller had during WWII. It is a bit dated, and the low budget really shows, but SF clearly did the best with what he had, and it stands as a great monument on war from a director who was really there. All of the characters are very likeable, and well acted by Lee Marvin, Mark Hamill, Robert Carradine, and company. The movie is fiction but influenced by real events. Many of the scenes, especially one involving a group of older sicilian women who cook a big meal for the squad, ring very true, since a fiction writer would obviously try and spice them up--the film is very honest, and it is good that Fuller left this story for us. I also like how it ends on a positive, optimistic note. "The real glory of war is surviving."

So many good reviews here, can only be a lot of people with the most casual, limited knowledge of WWII confusing this movie with some other, well done picture. First, what was the budget for this thing? Must have been very very low. The entire movie seems to involve six guys (total on both sides), who are sharing maybe three weapons. There are no planes, no ships, two incorrect tanks (one just had a hole where the driver's machine gun should have been). Just about any made for TV series or movie about WWII comes off more convincing than this turkey. This was a "major" motion picture, wasn't it?? It simply defies credulity that there could be a single good review of this travesty on here.

I guess people only read the "hated it" and "loved it" reviews but here goes anyway. I can't say that I really enjoyed this film or that it offered much in the way of commentary on the nature of WW2 or war in general. There have been so many films on the subject - ranging from the abysmal to the brilliant via the flawed. Terence Malik's Thin Red Line (is the name an intentional reference to Fuller's film?) would be a good example of the latter. Having just watched the "reconstructed" version it's not hard to see why the studio would have balked and re-cut it to a more digestible length. Whether this would have made it more coherent is questionable. The relatively low budget is apparent from the start, although that isn't necessarily a show-stopper in itself. But the recycling of sets and props in notionally different locations is horribly conspicuous. Then there's the "German" tanks... Some people have criticised Lee Marvin's lethargic performance but I thought that he was one of the few good things in the film, a reflection perhaps of his own experience of combat in the Pacific theatre (he was badly wounded on Saipan). If any actor has understood the psychology of soldiers it'd be Lee Marvin. There were some nicely conceived and executed elements but they were few and far between. Some of the scenes (like those in the asylum) are simply ludicrous and overblown. The overall construction and editing of the film is alarmingly disjointed even with with the changes of theatre flagged up by captions. Many times it looked to me as though essential linking and establishing shots had been omitted. I don't think that it's a spoiler to note that Fuller himself appears as a combat cameraman in one scene, a conceit that I suspect was copied by Kubrick in "Full Metal Jacket" - another horribly over-rated movie IMO.

About half an hour into watching this film I decided instead to count the Hollywood cliches instead of trying to believe in the plot.For those lucky enough not to have seen this film they were in no particular order: 1.Persistent lazy Hollywood producers allowing non-Americans to speak English to each other, e.g. German soldiers.At least Joseph E Levine insisted in his film "The Longest Day" (1962) that the French spoke French, German spoke German etc, and this was 18 years before the subject film was made!For those not able to understand these languages sub titles are always available.This lazy habit immediately destroys a film's credibility and convinces you all you are seeing is acting.It seems if you are going to portray an historic event you might at least film it in a credible way. 2.Untrained soldiers skilled in obstetrics in the middle of a battle field! 3.You see a concentration camp boy victim apparantly unable to walk and is laid down on the commandant's bed.Almost immediately he is seen to walk out under his own steam and then eating looking almost healthy when he refused food before.Then he cannot walk again and finally expires while riding piggy back on the sergeant! 4.The usual 1940 and 50s method of soldiers dying on screen i.e. a sudden hand up to "the wound" and then keeling over. 5.Usual portrayal of skilled German soldiers as stupid and unable to defend themselves. 6.Omaha Beach on a shoestring budget on D-Day - the platoon wins the beach battle by itself! 7.A superannuated sergeant (far too old for active service in WWII) going around Europe without any officer in charge of him and his platoon and when he asks for help from Brigade is told, "you're on your own". 8.A female resistance guerilla infiltrates into a lunatic asylum and proceeds to cut the throats of trained German soldiers.All medical staff were vetted and under German orders and would not have been able to secrete her into this type of establishment. 9.Little or no character development, so one feels no sympathy for the characters portrayed. 10.An insurance actuary would not accept when assessing the odds on survival, that the principal characters would all come through unscathed at the end of the film after risking their lives at Sicily (1943), D- Day (1944) and sundry other combat engagements. Well those are my top ten cliches. I don't want to bore readers with others.There should be a law in Hollywood at making films as excrutiating as this.I awarded it 2/10.

This review is on the "reconstructed" DVD, a version that came out several years ago, adding 49 minutes to the original 1980 movie. (The film runs 162 minutes, not 158 as stated on the IMDb title page.) The "old" version was very good, and this newer version makes the film even better. Either way, you have a solid war movie. For men - and that's who will primarily watch this movie because it's a guy's flick with no romance and no women leads - this keeps the action coming, but without overdoing it. You can different kinds of action scenes, too, not just people shooting at one another. I also appreciated the photography. It's a good visual movie. The added footage looked sharper and clearer than the previously shown, but either way it was nicely filmed and directed. Of course, the director is the famous Sam Fuller, who did a number of tough film noirs, among other things. Speaking of tough, the person who makes this movie a notch above average is Lee Marvin. He is just excellent as the tough-on-the-outside-but-soft-hearted underneath commanding officer, known only as "The Sergeant." With his deep voice and weathered face, Marvin makes for an effective leader of tough guys. The language was much milder in here than you find in more modern films, although it can be crude in a few spots. There are no f-words and about seven usages of the Lord's name in vain. However, there are a number of sexual references, some crude but, hey, that's "guy talk." All the young soldiers were good, too. It was especially interesting to see baby-faced Star Wars' star, Mark Hamill, playing one of the soldiers in the unit called "The Big Red One." The story with narration by one of the soldiers, tells of Marvin and his handful of men who travel and do battle from North Africa to Sicily, then Italy, the beaches of Normandy on D- Day and into Germany in addition to a few other memorable stops such as "an insane asylum." It's long, but I never found it boring and the men never stay too long in one spot.