In Saving Private Ryan, Steven Spielberg depicts the D-day landings with a realism lauded by veterans. The Big Red One depicts the D-day landings, too, and it was made by a veteran. Writer-director Samuel Fuller, who served in the First Infantry Division from North Africa to Czechoslovakia (including the Normandy landings), made a career out of swift, punchy B movies, such as Pickup on South Street and The Naked Kiss. The Big Red One became Fuller's nod to A-movie filmmaking, yet it has the solid, matter-of-fact perspective of the ground-level infantryman. The episodic... action ranges all over Europe, as a tough squad of American GIs (including Mark Hamill and Robert Carradine) follow their hard-bitten sergeant (Lee Marvin, at his best) and try to stay alive. Filmed mostly in Israel, the film delivers on the requisite war-movie conventions and tough-guy humour but also introduces notes of poetry. Fuller's D-day doesn't match the pyrotechnics of Spielberg's version, but it creates power from the simple image of a dead soldier's watch, ticking away in blood-soaked surf. A fine and memorable picture, The Big Red One might have been even greater had it been released in Fuller's full-length cut--someday perhaps a restoration will allow the director's vision to be seen for the first time. --Robert Horton [show more]
We will publish your review of The Big Red One - The Reconstruction on DVD within a few days as long as it meets our guidelines.
None of your personal details will be passed on to any other third party.
Please note this is a region 2 DVD and will require a region 2 (Europe) or region Free DVD Player in order to play. This version of 'The Big Red One' contains 40 minutes of extra footage that was removed prior to the original release. Lee Marvin stars in this episodic retelling of the exploits of the American First Infantry Division during World War II, focusing on the squad's sergeant and four of the teenage soldiers. They struggle to survive campaigns from North Africa in November, 1942, to Czechoslovakia in May, 1945: along the way they participate in the invasion of Sicily, the D-Day invasion, free a lunatic asylum and a concentration camp. Fuller had served with the Big Red One, the U.S. First Infantry Division, and the autobiographical content of his film kept it close to his heart. This full-length version, which is close to the late director's original cut, is one of American cinema's great war movies. Working with 70,000 feet of vault materials and Fuller's shooting script, critic/filmmaker Richard Schickel heads a reconstruction that adds over 40 minutes and transforms a truncated but admired war film into an epic masterwork! Actors Lee Marvin, Mark Hamill, Robert Carradine, Bobby Di Cicco, Kelly Ward, Siegfried Rauch, Serge Marquand & Charles Macaulay Director Samuel Fuller Certificate 15 years and over Year 1980 Number of discs 1 Screen Widescreen 1.85:1 Anamorphic Languages English - Dolby Digital (5.1) Subtitles English ; German ; Danish ; Finnish ; Norwegian ; Swedish ; Icelandic ; German for the hearing impaired ; English for the hard of hearing Duration 2 hours and 38 minutes (approx)
This site uses cookies.
More details in our privacy policy
