The Big Red One (reissue)

The Big Red One (1980. Director: Samuel Fuller)

I don't know much about Samuel Fuller and his filmography is filled with unrecognizable titles. Fuller began as an author and entered film in the thirties before going to World War II--these experiences led to the story that is The Big Red One. What seems to be the prevailing thought on Fuller's career is that he did a lot of controversial works that never got a wide release.

The Big Red One is a movie that took over thirty years to make, and once had John Wayne tapped to play the sergeant. The film managed to finally get made in 1978 with Lee Marvin as the Sarge. Mixed in, a mid-Star Wars Mark Hamill plays Private Griff and of the Carradine family, Robert Carradine (half-bro of David, bro of Keith, son of John) plays Private Zab, who is representative of Fuller as he's a writer fighting the war.

Back in 1980 this movie clocked in under 2 hours, and friends and family of the now-deceased Fuller have restored 45 minutes to a film that many considered great already. I have only this viewing to draw from, so I don't have any comparison. The film is a series of episodes that a squad of fighters, led by Marvin, run into during various operations ranging from Vichy French Africa onto Sicily and Italy, D-Day at Omaha Beach, and into Germany. There's a fight in an insane asylum, a village disguised by working women, a scene where the officers have to help a woman give birth, and at a concentration camp, where characters learn the meaning of the war.

These are all great scenes, and Lee Marvin is terrific as the Sarge. Just like any war movie, there are stock characters we have grown accustomed to. The peace-loving man who can't kill other men and therefore, when he finally kills someone it has meaning; the aging Sergeant who has all of the knowledge and just wants to do everything he can and doesn't question the morality of war...but this film doesn't make a statement, it makes a sort of document. The film states, "This is fictional life based on factual death," and the episodes depicted in this film actually happened. It's not an antiwar sentiment or a rockin' and rollin' action picture. It is, at times, very humorous, especially the birth scene and the asylum scene.

The film was released before Platoon, Full Metal Jacket, and Saving Private Ryan but I have a feeling most audiences will see this after they've seen those, so there's a bad tendency to compare this film technically to those pictures. This movie has more of a kinship to Ryan due to its setting, plot, and characters. If you've seen then you know that the movie is technically brilliant and has a twenty-minute assault on Normandy in the beginning that stays with you after watching. But Ryan is being focused by a mad genius in Steven Spielberg who, despite displaying and debating the conflicts of war, makes his film a sort of sensory roller coaster ride. His head is always massaging the action of a picture. Nothing wrong with it, but a movie like Ryan is a giant peacock with brilliant feathers that is hard to ignore compared to The Big Red One. In other words, in all honesty, make sure you have some energy before partaking in this film, because our day and age of sensory overload might make your brain shut down when there's no stellar action war scenes to hold on to. The movie has its own genius, and it needs to be seen.