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Big Red One, The (re-release)
Warner Bros.


8.2

based on 20 reviews
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based on 4 votes
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MPAA RATING: R for war violence and some language

Starring Lee Marvin, Mark Hamill, Robert Carradine, Bobby Di Cicco, Kelly Ward, Stéphane Audran, Siegfried Rauch, and Serge Marquand

A reconstruction of Samuel Fuller's 1980 brawny, compassionate adventure of a World War II infantry squadron's battles across Europe. (Warner Bros.)

GENRE(S):	Action \| Drama \| War
WRITTEN BY:	Samuel Fuller
DIRECTED BY:	Samuel Fuller
RELEASE DATE:	DVD: October 5, 2004 Video: November 6, 2001 Theatrical: November 12, 2004
RUNNING TIME:	158 minutes, Color
ORIGIN:	USA
LANGUAGE(S):	English / French / Italian

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

100

Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum

A grand-style, idiosyncratic war epic, with wonderful poetic ideas, intense emotions, and haunting images rich in metaphysical portent.

100

LA Weekly Scott Foundas

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.

Los Angeles Times Kevin Crust

Marvin's performance, much enhanced by "The Reconstruction," is a marvel.

Newsweek David Ansen

Marvin's taciturn performance--a moving demonstration of masculine grace under pressure--may be his finest.

Variety Staff (Not credited)

It's a terrific war yarn, a picture of palpable raw power which manages both Intense intimacy and great scope at the same time. (Review of Original Release)

Washington Post Michael O'Sullivan

What the movie may lack in "Saving Private Ryan"-style gloss, it more than makes up for in authenticity, or, in other words, heart.

New York Daily News Jami Bernard

The combination of old-time Hollywood valor and ahead-of-its-time surprises makes this restoration a big event.

TV Guide Staff (Not credited)

Powerful, humorous, and touching. (Review of Original Release)

The Onion (A.V. Club) Keith Phipps

In some respects a less tidy film than before, particularly when it veers off into a subplot involving a Nazi soldier played by Siegfried Rauch, the new cut mostly retains the original's virtues while adding details and episodes that make it more recognizably a Fuller film.

The New York Times Dana Stevens

The Big Red One, for all its uncompromising brutality, is viscerally, angrily alive. Fuller was lucky to survive the war. It is our good fortune that this film, a tribute to his luck (and to those who did not share it), has come back to life.

The New York Times Vincent Canby

Salon.com Charles Taylor

Fuller was never a poetic director, but in The Big Red One he finds what in himself was closest to lyricism. Fuller's movie is like flowers thrown on a battlefield in remembrance, and it makes the overblown war movies that have followed seem like cheap and tatty Veteran's Day poppies.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

Hard-boiled, filled with action, held together by male camaraderie, directed with a lean economy of action. It's one of the most expensive B-pictures ever made, and I think that helps it fit the subject. "A" war movies are about War, but "B" war movies are about soldiers. (Review of Original Release)

Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt

Reissued with the addition of 50 minutes trimmed from the original 1980 cut, Fuller's only A-budget movie is still among the lesser works of this frequently brilliant filmmaker.

Boston Globe Ty Burr

There are sequences in The Big Red One that you can't forget, and every one of them could have been made better with a bigger budget and a realism that was beyond Fuller's grasp at the time.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer Bill White

In his lifetime, Fuller longed for a restoration of what he considered his most personal film. Schickel's version is a labor of love that, despite the controversy it is bound to ignite, comes close to fulfilling the director's vision.

The New Yorker Anthony Lane

Its kitschy grabs at the surreal--the scene in a lunatic asylum, where German troops are billeted, manages to be at once implausible and offensive--that blocks any close engagement with the drama. That said, you must see this film for one unstoppable reason, and that is Lee Marvin.

Village Voice J. Hoberman

Certainly a testament to Fuller's tenacity, but recent raves notwithstanding, it's no masterpiece...The Big Red One isn't even Fuller's greatest war film. Of those, I'd rank it fourth -- but that's not half bad.

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

Lee Marvin, it must be said, is terrific as the platoon commander, and Fuller deserves props for the film's one sustained sequence: the D-Day attack, in which the platoon gets pinned on the beach for a hellish eternity.

Washington Post Stephen Hunter

Though 45 minutes longer than the original release, still feels thinner, less complex, more mythic and far less compelling.

The average user rating for this movie is 8.2 (out of 10) based on 4 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Vince H. gave it a9:
I agreed with everything Yoon C. said until he stated that Fuller wasn't a true maverick with real talent like Norman Mailer. Mailer was a wanna-be intellectual who wrote at best 2 or 3 great works, and the rest of his output is as unforgettable as say the last 10 John Updike or Joyce Carol Oates books. I do agree that Fuller is overrated. Fuller was a brilliant, iconoclastic director who made subversive, well-crafted and personal movies in the studio era, but he was not a great film artist like the aforementioned filmmakers Yoon C wrote of near the bottom of his review. The Big Red One is also overrated. Like J Hoberman says, this isn't even Fuller's best war movie, forget about being one of the best of all time. China Gate, The Steel Helmet, Fixed Bayonets, and others are all better war films that TBRO. The first film Fuller made after this, the long unavailable White Dog, is also superior. How my fav critic, Jonathan Rosenbaum, could list this as best film of the year is disheartening. Obviously it is worth seeing mainly for Lee Marvin's excellent performance and to see the film somewhat more of the way Fuller intended.

Yoon C. gave it a 7:
'When legend becomes fact, print the legend.' one of the silliest legends in the film community is that fuller was a great artist. at best, he was a decent filmmaker. but, left-leaning critics are enamoured of the usefulness of fuller just as stalinists were with maxim gorky. fuller's image as the rebel, maverick, and iconolast is just too juicy to pass up for wanna-be-rebels and intellectual cranks who want to be badass thru association with rascally grampy; how we love to bypass the discipline of parents and be doted by grandparents. and you gotta give the man some credit; he was a war veteran, a toughguy, a no-nonsense man of action. however, mavericks like norman mailer and sam peckinpah had real talent. this just wasn't true with fuller. ultimately, his signifcance to cinema is hardly more than that of stanley kramer; he made movies that were controversial and daring for their time. fuller's much hyped films of the 50s have dated badly. they mean something to the 50s generation for whom they once may have been shocking and now have nostalgic value. or, fuller's films may mean something to younger generation of film geeks for whom esoteric knowledge of cinema is a great badge of honor. but, let's be real, and only by being real can we truly honor fuller the artist. in big red one, marvin is no great hero but a man who does what he must do. he's a good man, not a great man. fuller was, at best, a good director who made the films to the best of his limited abilities. that's something worth honoring. but, seriously, fuller belongs nowhere near the likes of welles, hitchcock, rossellini, or even peckinpah, walsh, or cassavettes. we can credit his example for having inspired personal filmmaking but we cannot honestly treat his films as serious art. of course, if you're an academic geek and wanna play games with subtext and whatever, have it your way at burgerking.

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Big Red One, The (re-release) Warner Bros.

Big Red One, The (re-release)
Warner Bros.