Colibel Terrible acting, screenplay and direction.

Ceticultsot Beautiful, moving film.

ChampDavSlim The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

Fleur Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

classicsoncall The film is book-ended by similar scenes. In both, the unnamed sergeant portrayed by Lee Marvin attacks a German soldier moments after the war he's engaged in has come to an end. In the first sequence, Marvin's character shows remorse that he took a life unnecessarily; at the end of the movie he attempts to save the German soldier's life he just stabbed after finding out that a treaty has been confirmed. Both instances might have been considered attempted murder, a differentiation that's explored in the picture as stated in my summary line above in the Sergeant's own words to one of the men in his squad.As far as war movies go, I didn't get a lot out of this one. The film focuses more on the personalities of the four principals in Marvin's unit, and how they managed to survive their experiences throughout campaigns in Northern Africa, Sicily, D-Day on Omaha Beach, Belgium and Czechoslovakia. There's a particular scene that takes place in a Belgian insane asylum, presumably meant by director Sam Fuller to counterpoint the insanity of war in general, so on that basis the sequence seems to offer a realistic evaluation. Much of the rest of the film is rather plodding and doesn't appear to have been made for the action crowd. The explanation and depiction of a Bangalore relay was appreciated, as I now understand what that scene was meant to convey.Other than Lee Marvin's role as the Sergeant, the rest of the acting is less than noteworthy. Outside of his Luke Skywalker character, I haven't seen Mark Hamill in anything else that's impressive. He has two defining moments in the picture when first, he freezes up during an early battle against French Vichy forces, and later on when he blanks out and repeatedly shoots a German soldier, virtually unable to process the idea that the man is already dead. In both cases, the horror of war is mirrored in Private Griff's blank expression, perhaps a testament to the film's closing argument that 'surviving is the only glory in war'.

professorskridlov I guess people only read the "hated it" and "loved it" reviews but here goes anyway. I can't say that I really enjoyed this film or that it offered much in the way of commentary on the nature of WW2 or war in general. There have been so many films on the subject - ranging from the abysmal to the brilliant via the flawed. Terence Malik's Thin Red Line (is the name an intentional reference to Fuller's film?) would be a good example of the latter. Having just watched the "reconstructed" version it's not hard to see why the studio would have balked and re-cut it to a more digestible length. Whether this would have made it more coherent is questionable.The relatively low budget is apparent from the start, although that isn't necessarily a show-stopper in itself. But the recycling of sets and props in notionally different locations is horribly conspicuous. Then there's the "German" tanks... Some people have criticised Lee Marvin's lethargic performance but I thought that he was one of the few good things in the film, a reflection perhaps of his own experience of combat in the Pacific theatre (he was badly wounded on Saipan). If any actor has understood the psychology of soldiers it'd be Lee Marvin.There were some nicely conceived and executed elements but they were few and far between. Some of the scenes (like those in the asylum) are simply ludicrous and overblown. The overall construction and editing of the film is alarmingly disjointed even with with the changes of theatre flagged up by captions. Many times it looked to me as though essential linking and establishing shots had been omitted. I don't think that it's a spoiler to note that Fuller himself appears as a combat cameraman in one scene, a conceit that I suspect was copied by Kubrick in "Full Metal Jacket" - another horribly over-rated movie IMO.

Thomas Lord I really have no idea why this film is so highly rated, I think it must be down to reviewers nostalgia from seeing it as a child. The attention to detail is awful; I understand that it was probably not possible to source authentic equipment in 1980 and obviously there was no CGI but really, is it too much to ask not to have 1980's hairstyles , modern Israeli(Oh the irony!) tank drivers with modern helmets and Germans shouting "Americaner schweinhund!". I've tried to watch it three times now, and I'm sure a modern re telling would do a much better job.It's clearly a fascinating story but this version doesn't make it so.

zagreb-zg The Big Red One is very naive try to show us how real battles look like. The most of the time there are nobody other in the battle except that four soldiers with their sergeant. It seems they are completely alone in the war... Also, it is totally unreal and impossible situation that sergeant is assigned command of a squad unit of four of five soldiers. Situation like this never happens in a war. When German tanks coming from a 1 km distance, soldiers dig the two-meters-deep-holes in rocky terrain in less than 10 minutes... in real situation, that work needs few hours... and they dig that holes in the middle of the road - just on the way of the tanks, with illogical intention that tanks drive over their heads. Why??? When they hide themselves in a cave, they kill i-don't-know-how-many Germans, entering one by one into cave... When the soldiers land on the beach in Africa, there are no transports anywhere around - like they just come swimming from America... There are many more situation like that... whole movie is very boring and fake.