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12 Rounds Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
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Big Red One, The (re-release)
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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...
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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