Synopsis
A veteran sergeant of World War I leads a squad in World War II, always in the company of the survivor Pvt. Griff, the writer Pvt. Zab, the Sicilian Pvt. Vinci and Pvt. Johnson, in Vichy French Africa, Sicily, D-Day at Omaha Beach, Belgium and France, and ending in a concentration camp in Czechoslovakia where they face the true horror of war.
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Cast
- Lee MarvinThe Sergeant
- Mark HamillGriff
- Robert CarradineZab
- Bobby Di CiccoVinci
- Kelly WardJohnson
- Stéphane AudranWalloon
- Siegfried RauchSchroeder
- Serge MarquandRensonnet
- Charles MacaulayGeneral / Captain
- Alain DouteyBroban
Recommendations
- 100
Chicago Reader
A grand-style, idiosyncratic war epic, with wonderful poetic ideas, intense emotions, and haunting images rich in metaphysical portent. - 90
Newsweek
Marvin's taciturn performance--a moving demonstration of masculine grace under pressure--may be his finest. - 90
Variety
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) - 90
Washington Post
What the movie may lack in "Saving Private Ryan"-style gloss, it more than makes up for in authenticity, or, in other words, heart. - 80
The New York Times
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. - 80
Salon
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. - 80
The A.V. Club
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. - 75
Chicago Sun-Times
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)
