The Big Red One

Why the hell is this highly acclaimed? An absolute chore to sit through. Marvin is alright but it's often super-boring and there's a healthy surplus of really bad scenes. Hopefully, these problems may in part be blamed on the edition, 'The Reconstruction'. As I understand it, the original is about an hour shorter. But I don't see how removing a third of this mess could make it even half-way decent.

One of the greatest war-movies I have ever seen !!!

Great war film.I have to point out tho that I dont think germans drove sherman tanks in WW2.

A sweeping war movie across the European and North African theater. Touches upon some very disturbing issues all soldiers may have to face, a must see.

Some good, some bad. Lee Marvin as good as always.

It doesn't feel as special now as it probably did in 1980 but it's still a really good film. Lee Marvin delivers a subtle but powerful performance and the film's style makes the viewer relate to the way a long war can overwhelm and make people numb.

Wildly uneven, it's essentially a series of vignettes from WWII focusing mostly on the absurd rather than the heroic. The dialogues often border on the ridiculous, and the script in itself isn't very polished, but Fuller's attention to morbid details and insistence upon showing the realistic, ugly and often surreal aspects of the war lend it a redeeming value, despite its lack of overall coherence.

no lack of interesting events (even with some of them being pretty absurd), but it's fiction and i don't expect total war realism from a war movie made in 1980. all the main characters are likable and well portrayed. i thought the scope of the movie was something pretty great, covering nearly every aspect of the european theater as fought by the americans.

Before Saving Private Ryan, this was the best WWII movie about the interaction of squad members in combat. Lee Marvin has never been better. A must see.

Plays like a Cliff's Notes on the war. I saw the shorter theatrical cut and it felt like it was wisped along too quickly, often without a real balance of where they were in relation to the action (imagine if you couldn't figure out if Die Hard was in an office building or a mini mall). A lot of Sam Fuller touches (baby in a tank, the insane acting sane by shooting a gun) amongst pretty good battle scenes. It just didn't click, but I'll give the director's 40 min longer cut a try, eventually.

Another great ww-II film. Historically pretty correct, no glorious hero stuff, but an interesting account of a group of soldiers from their first contact with the germans in North Africa, to the invasions of Sicily, France (d-day) and the battle of the Bulge in Belgium. This film still stands the test of time and after 20 yrs doesn't feel dated at all.

You're essentially watching the American army sucking its own dick, killing krouts, delivering babies, arranging honourable burials for orphan boys' mothers, and for all the money seemingly spent on the endless explosions, the direction is amateurish, acting poor, and the enemies identified by accents that are baffingly bad. Avoid.

Expected something a lot more unconventional from late-era Sam Fuller. This is just your average war pic. He does have a good eye for imagery but it's not enough to make this interesting.

More effective filmmaking from Fuller saddled by way too many cornball aspects. Ranging on the cartoonish, in places.

All various historical inaccuracies put aside, I really liked the episodic nature of this movie and the way it shifts from one front to another, centered around the small group of soldiers and their leader who are thrown at various situations. It shows different sides of the war, from the comradery and the dark banter between the soldiers to the victims and the people who are thrown in the middle of this shitstorm.

What the hell was this. Nearly three hours of boring action set pieces overlaid by reductive propaganda. All the characters besides Lee Marvin, Liberal Conscience guy and Cigar Smoking guy blend into one another - oh right I forgot the evil German guy who stalks this particular squad across two continents and machineguns everyone who doesn't like Hitler. And, of course, the random German doctor who makes out with Lee Marvin. Hot.

Lee Marvin and Mark Hamill star in this World War 2 action drama. They're members of 1st Infantry Division, the Big Red One of the title. We follow their journey from North Africa, through occupied Europe, into Germany. The movie has obviously inspired Saving Private Ryan and the un romanticised view of war was, I'm sure, way ahead of its time. Definitely worth a watch if you're a fan of the genre. #1001Movies

I watched the Reconstruction. A loose collection of the bizarre.

The masterpiece of Fuller's old age. Man, this war movie has everything, including a baby born in a tank! A great Lee Marvin performance.

Zab: "Saving that Kraut was the final joke of the whole goddamned war. I mean we had more in common with him than all our replacements who got killed whose names we never even knew. We'd all made it through we were alive. I'm gonna dedicate my book to those who shot but didn't get shot, because it's about survivors."

It might be the worst war movie ever made.

Absolute classic. Fuller may not have had the money that Spielberg had to make _Saving Private Ryan_, but this movie blows SPR right out of the water

Symbolic action drama, very well made but finally lacking a cumulative impact.

"The Big Red One" has its moments, but the idea that a 60-year-old three striper could spend all of WWII fighting on the front lines was too much for me.

Some elements are a little silly (the rival German officer, the lonely Nazi doctor, the insane asylum) but otherwise a good war movie, utilizing the same "vignettes" narrative style as Saving Private Ryan, among others.

I really don't understand why so many people like this movie. I thought it was hokey and kind of unrealistic, not to mention completely lacking any kind of intensity.

"The film's overriding mission is to expose both the inherent absurdity and tragedy of war." - Nick Schager

In the form of its 2002 restoration, this film is almost perfect. The story of the First Infantry Division's fight from North Africa through Nazi-occupied Europe, it's written and directed by a soldier who was there. If it had just had a big enough budget to make Omaha Beach look right, it'd get 100 points from me.

Pretty great in its ability to draw us into the grueling pain of war, all the while having it punctuated with humor or parties that seem badly out of place. But this is the nature of survival, which is what the film celebrates.

Some very bad acting balanced with a great performance by Lee Marvin.

Apparently a classic? Not bad, just really corny. Lee Marvin is very good at least

Brilliant. Only let down is the misplaced use of Dirty Dozen-ish humour and music that thankfully wears off in the second half. Even Mark Hamill is good.

What Sam Fuller could do when given a budget. This is an epic war movie that spends far more time on the soldiers than on the war itself. It is harrowing and lacks any sense of jingoism. The episodic nature of the film reinforces the cog-in-the-wheel aspect that war utilizes to dehumanize its combatants.