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Lee Marvin, Mark Hamill, Robert Carradine, Bobby Di Cicco, Stéphane Audran ... see more see more... , Kelly Ward , Siegfried Rauch , Serge Marquand , Charles Macaulay , Alain Doutey , Maurice Marsac , Colin Gilbert , Joseph Clark , Doug Werner , Perry Lang , Marthe Villalonga , Ken Hudson Campbell , Howard Delman , Bobby DiCicco , Keith Carradine

Samuel Fuller's valedictory war picture, The Big Red One follows the First Infantry Division from Africa to Europe during the years 1942 through 1945. Lee Marvin portrays the division sergeant; he's t... read more read more...ough and experienced, to be sure, but he takes on his job with cool professionalism rather than Hollywood bravado. Based on Fuller's own experiences, the film is a loosely constructed series of anecdotes. Among them are an insane asylum under bombardment while the inmates applaud and a climactic vignette in which a very young concentration camp internee dies while a friendly soldier plays piggy-back with the boy. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

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74% liked it

8,161 ratings

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91% liked it

44 critics

PG, 1 hr. 53 min.

Directed by: Samuel Fuller

Release Date: May 28, 1980

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DVD Release Date: April 27, 1999

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Flixster Reviews (354)

  • ajv2688
    January 8, 2011
    ajv2688
    I saw this movie because Mark Hamill is in it, and he gives a good performance, but other than that, I didn't like this movie. It's just another WWII movie, and it's slow and boring too. I didn't care for it.
  • garyX
    August 3, 2007
    garyX
    A rather clumsy and over-long war movie that contains all the usual "madness of war" messages, but they're delivered in a rather ham-fisted way, and it's directed like a TV show. The emotional drama is clumsy at best, and whenever the grittiness you'd expect in the depiction of v... read moreiolence in an anti-war movie should appear, the director shies away. Half-hearted.
  • gator681
    March 27, 2005
    gator681
    [font=Century Gothic][color=darkslategray]"Fixed Bayonets"(1951) is a Korean War movie directed by Sam Fuller. In the midst of war, the main force of troops has to retreat. In order to convince the enemy that they have not moved, a small platoon of 48 men has to stay behind and... read more convince them that they are a larger force. There are the usual amount of stock characters and it is predictable but Fuller has more things on his mind this time around. Notably, it is the psychological take on what makes for a good leader. Plus, there are several bravura sequences and an excellent performance from Richard Basehart.(Fixed Bayonets is not in the Rotten Tomatoes database. I'll give it an unofficial 7 out of 10.)[/color][/font]
    [font=Century Gothic][color=#2f4f4f][/color][/font]
    [font=Century Gothic][color=red]"The Big Red One"(1980) is a movie about a veteran sergeant(Lee Marvin) leading his troops in World War II from North Africa to the battlefields of Europe. This was Sam Fuller's dream project for many years based partially on his experiences in World War II. It was originally released in a truncated version. Last year, Richard Schickel led a team that restored most of the lost footage. I remember seeing the original version sometime in the 1980's, but I don't remember that much about it(somehow Lee Marvin chucking some poor guy's testicle over his shoulder has managed to stay with me) and couldn't really comment on what was added. It's episodic by its very nature and it does start awkwardly but it does get better as it goes along, ending on an emotionally powerful note. And this is the role that Lee Marvin was born to play. And before you deride Mark Hamill, check out Harrison Ford in Force Ten from Navarone(1979).[/color][/font]
    [font=Century Gothic][color=#ff0000][/color][/font]
    [font=Century Gothic][color=black]Throughout both movies, there is a consistency. Neither movie glorifies war.[/color][/font]
    [font=Century Gothic][color=#2f4f4f][/color][/font]
    [font=Century Gothic][color=#2f4f4f][/color][/font]
  • fb20312798
    July 4, 2010
    fb20312798
    If Samuel Fuller had a bigger budget and bigger stars when he originally made the movie and if the newly Reconstructed version had been the one released in theaters I believe the film would have more of a classic status ascribed to it. The only big issue I had with the film is t... read morehe small side plot of a German officer, who appears to fill some kind of a "villain" role, that seems to go nowhere. I did like the performances of Lee Marvin and mark Hamil and its really great to see a WWII movie made by someone who actually fought in that war. Fuller based much of what happened on his own experience and it gives The Big Red One a sense of authenticity that many war films do not have. Band of Brothers actually owes a lot to this movie.
  • hossein13
    July 23, 2010
    hossein13
    July 2010 - Fuller is clearly trying to give us a striped, real and biographic picture of war. To some degree it works and we have an unconventional war movie without a single story and with scenes that makes it hard to draw a clear line between the good and the bad guys. But thi... read mores gets mixed up with an immature development of characters that try to be more than ordinary soldiers. This emphasis on these characters and their weird friendship also stands on the way of making a semi-documentary about war and its ugliness. I should add that I liked the very first sequence of the black and white memories of the WWI with just the red ribbons; but that also remains irrelevant to the rest of the movie.
  • seesharp
    July 17, 2010
    seesharp
    Lee Marvin reloading Mark Hamill at the concentration camp is one of the most powerful, and certainly most memorable scenes ever
  • clooneyfan
    May 31, 2010
    clooneyfan
    "Those Sicilian women cooked us a grat meal.
    Too bad they were over 50.
    We were more horny than we were hungry."
  • engrymfilm
    May 30, 2010
    engrymfilm
    I'll hand it to Fuller on this one. He doesn't fill this movie up with bullshit sympathy like so many other war movies do. In fact his characters do the opposite. When facing a dead soldier in their own side they simply pick up their helmets and run. There's no dramatic stare dow... read moren with forced tears. We also know the characters only by their time serving together. No flashbacks and no back stories either. We're simply given the instruction to carefully observe and see what we can find out about these men.
  • billfenner1967
    February 9, 2009
    billfenner1967
    Anyone who has read writer-director Samuel Fuller's memoirs "A Third Face" will be familiar with his war experiences and see them depicted in this film.

    What is lacks in production values and certain other aesthetic values, it makes up in great writing and acting, especially as... read more the events depicted in this film are so antithetical to the typical WW2 films made by Hollywood.

    Fuller's core belief that there are no heroes in war, just lucky guys who didn't catch a bullet, is shown unapologetically here. And it's no surprise that fellow WW2 vet Lee Marvin was a passionate supporter of Fuller's vision and promised him he'd star in this film for years before it ever got made.
  • grayavec
    November 30, 2008
    grayavec
    Long and boring film that has surprisingly little war in it. Lee Marvin is good as always but the rest is terrible.

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Critic Reviews

Colin Covert
January 20, 2005
Colin Covert, Minneapolis Star Tribune

A big, impressive slab of drama -- maybe not a masterpiece or an epic, but a colorful story that sweeps you up and covers a lot of ground at a fast clip. Full Review

Kevin Crust
January 20, 2005
Kevin Crust, Los Angeles Times

'The Reconstruction,' which clocks in at 2 hours, 43 minutes, with not a single extraneous frame, elevates the work from a robust genre film to a full-blown epic. Full Review

Ty Burr
December 3, 2004
Ty Burr, Boston Globe

The director's gift for bare-knuckles lyricism rescues scene after scene. Full Review

Owen Gleiberman
December 2, 2004
Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly

If you don't elect to watch The Big Red One through the lens of Sam Fuller's mystique ... you'll realize that it has been celebrated in ways that essentially make virtues of its flaws. Full Review

Stephen Whitty
November 15, 2004
Stephen Whitty, Newark Star-Ledger

In its own rough and still unfinished way, The Big Red One works -- as a memoir of a time, and a movie of the war. Full Review

Stephen Hunter
November 12, 2004
Stephen Hunter, Washington Post

Alas, the lost version of Samuel Fuller's The Big Red One of 1980 has been found -- reassembled, actually, by the distinguished film critic Richard Schickel -- and it's a lot less than legendary. It i... Full Review

Jami Bernard
November 12, 2004
Jami Bernard, New York Daily News

The combination of old-time Hollywood valor and ahead-of-its-time surprises makes this restoration a big event. Full Review

Michael O'Sullivan
November 11, 2004
Michael O'Sullivan, 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. Full Review

A.O. Scott
November 11, 2004
A.O. Scott, New York Times

Seven years after Fuller's death, 24 years after its initial, botched release, and almost 60 years after V-E day, The Big Red One is finally here, in a form close to what Fuller intended. Full Review

Anthony Lane
November 9, 2004
Anthony Lane, New Yorker

You must see this film for one unstoppable reason, and that is Lee Marvin.

Critic ratings and reviews powered by RottenTomatoes.com

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    • Griff: I can't murder anybody.
    • Sergeant Possum: We don't murder; we kill.
    • Griff: It's the same thing.
    • Sergeant Possum: The hell it is, Griff. You don't murder animals; you kill 'em.
    • Johnson: Would you look at how fast they put the names of all our guys who got killed?
    • Sergeant Possum: That's a World War One memorial.
    • Johnson: But the name's are the same.
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The Big Red One Trivia

  • Name the war movie released in 1980 that Mark Hamill had a role in.  Answer »
  • fill in the word to find the movie titles The _____ Sky The _____ Deal On Madonna Street _____ Night The _____ Red One The _____ Heat The _____ Sleep  Answer »
  • In the WWII epic "The Big Red One" (1980), Smitty trips a mine and loses what?  Answer »
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