Big Red One, The - The Reconstruction Details

[Highly rated reviewer]

"Factual Life based on actual death"

This is the restored version of Director Sam Fullers WW2 epic, the original was deemed too violent by the studio (Imagine, a violent war film…..tsskk) and cut to ribbons so it made no narrative sense. Original material has been added by a restoration team and now this is a film with the resolute stamp of empirical authority. Fuller fought in WW2, taking part in the Omaha beach landings and his minds eye view of proceedings lends this film a veracity few can match.

The main characters are all part of the 1st Infantry, the “Big Red One” of the films title, named after their insignia,. Ex Marine Lee Marvin in his last great role plays the gruff Sergeant along with Privates Griff, Zab Vinci and Johnson. Griff is played by Mark Hamill at the peak of his “Star Wars” fame. We follow them from North Africa to Sicily onto Omaha Beach and through Europe until they liberate a Concentration Camp in Czechoslovakia. The film is a series of intense battle sequences, interspersed by periods of quiet reflection, jokey banter and the cold dread of death.

There is grim humour in the script, but also poetry and understated emotion. Modern films about war are now made by people referencing other war movies and while The Big Red One doesn’t have anything as viscerally shocking as the opening sequence of “Saving Private Ryan”, unlike that jingoistic preposterous movie it rings true with an almost documentary realism.

Grim but Compelling

Based on Fuller's own wartime experiences, this tells the picaresque story of a sergeant and four of his men as they travel through the various theatres of WW2. The tone is one of reportage and although sequences are handled with flair, there is deliberately no attempt to make a definitive statement about war.

This appears to be the "reconstructed" version (the studio made Fuller cut entire battles out of the 1980 release).

Although Fuller notably denounced "Full Metal Jacket" as "a recruiting poster", this film is probably nearer in tone to that than to any other war movie. Although it has surreal moments, it never veers off into "Apocalypse Now" territory and in many ways harks back to earlier WW2 films, albeit with far more grit.

It's also a lot more more realistic about what soldiers are like than for example Spielberg.

Bleak and almost nihilistic, this shows war as utter madness which you survive as best you can through luck and cunning. Surely a lesson many of us need to relearn in 2005.