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.

Dear Samuel Fuller,this guy called Quentin Tarantino ripped off the beginning of your film with the visuals of the statue of Jesus on the cross. He might also have been inspired (for another film of his) by the scene where a Belgian maid identifies a German officer posing as an American by the way he eats a steak.I liked the story - a tightly knit unit of soldiers lead by a sergeant (Lee Marvin) who is both ruthless and humane take part in some of the important battles of World War 2. Your film can be looked at as series of dramatic and action set pieces separated by scenes of the soldiers interacting with each other and cracking jokes. The soldiers helping a German woman deliver a baby, eating lunch with a bunch of Italian mamas, partying with Belgian women and attacking a mental asylum stood out for me. But the action scenes were the film's weak point. Sometimes, they went on and on. They were quite boring. I guess you were aiming for realism. I liked the extensive use of close ups and the quick cuts in the battle scenes. The images of the bloodied waves and food stood out for me.Rober Carradine who plays the Italian narrator looked like a young John Cassavetes. Lee Marvin was effortlessly bad ass and melancholic as the leader of the squadron. The catharsis for Marvin's character (who has fought in both the World War's) at the film's end was very imaginative and touching.Best Regards, Pimpin.(7/10)

It's 1918 at the end of WWI. A private (Lee Marvin) kills a German soldier but he finds out that the war is already over. It's then WWII as the same soldier now as Sergeant of a squad in the 1st Infantry Division nicknamed The Big Red One. They land on the North African shore but Private Griff (Mark Hamill) is unable to kill. The Sergeant is injured and captured during Kasserine Pass. He escapes during a battle dressed as an Arab and rejoins his unit going to Sicily. Only four men remained from the original twelve. After Sicily, they are sent to Normandy on D-day.This is basically a series of small squad action instead of large epic set pieces. It's interesting to go small in a big budget movie. It doesn't have great memorable characters other than Lee Marvin as the nameless leader. He shouldn't be the lead character. He's more fitting as a supporting character. This movie is in desperate need of Hamill taking charge but he never does. The guys become nameless faceless cannon fodder although that's kind of the point.

"The Big Red One" qualifies as an all-time combat classic, especially the reconstructed version where 50 minutes of cut footage were restored. "Steel Helmet" director Sam Fuller saw action in World War II as an infantryman, and he has fashioned a gripping film bristling with ironies. Eloquently, Fuller meditates about the central theme of war. For example, is war murder or merely killing? Fuller provides an answer in a roundabout way during a later scene when the discussion of murder versus killing crops up. Another theme related to the issue of war is the question of insanity. If war is insanity, then who can be considered sane? A later scene in an insane asylum where our heroes rescue a French resistance agent highlights the insanity issue. What sets this war movie aside from most is that Fuller is able to alternate lethally serious scenes with light-hearted humorous scenes. Lee Marvin stars as an anonymous, hell-bent-for-leather Army Sergeant who is shown as a young doughboy in World War I to an older, wiser NCO in World War II. Naturally, Marvin gives a wholly convincing performance. Indeed, the Oscar winning actor served in the South Pacific as a Marine during World War II so he is more than adequately cast. "Star Wars" hero Mark Hamill is just as effectively cast as a wet-behind-the-ear Private named Griff who struggles with the quandary about whether war is murder or killing. Hamill is one of a quartet of G.I.s who follows Marvin from Casablanca to Czechoslovakian death camp. Meantime, during the movie, Fuller cross-cuts between Marvin's mentoring NCO watching over his duckling-like troops with Siegfried Raunch's cynical Wehrmach German Sergeant Schroeder, whose comments about war as killing rather than murder mirror Marvin's Sergeant. This is ironic later because Schroeder machine guns to death a German conscientious objector. Writer & director Fuller develops Marvin and his recruits over the course of the movie so they emerge as three dimensional characters. Long before Spielberg messed around with minimal color in his black & white classic "Schindler's List," Fuller did so in the opening scene when Marvin boasts about killing a wandering German and presents his idea about the unit patch for the First Division with a strip of red thread. If you want to see the ultimate World War II actioneer that covers just about every aspect of the war, "The Big Red One" is the standard bearing. Fuller achieves this feat without wallowing in blood and gore, and he doesn't have a multi-million dollar budget to capture the epic sprawl of war. The Normandy scene with the bangolare torpedo is nothing short of brilliant, but unlike Darryl F. Zanuck and Steven Spielberg who had millions, Fuller does so with considerably less. Altogether, the reconstruction of "The Big Red One" trumps the shorter theatrical release.