Count me somewhere in between the reviewers below who fulsomely sing this film's praises and those who consign it to war movie perdition. I guess the problem, for me, is that in his last film writer/director Sam Fuller couldn't decide whether to make a gritty, realistic study of combat and its effect on soldiers or an entertaining, anti establishment action/adventure pic like, say, "Dirty Dozen". So, in the great tradition of Hollywood, he did both. And the effect is jarring, to say the least. The battle scenes, especially Kasserine Pass and the D Day landing, are impressive in their brutality and tension, especially when you compare them to movies like "Patton" and "Private Ryan" where directors Franklin Schaffner and Steven Spielberg, dealing with the same military engagements, achieve a similar mood but had considerably more money with which to work. Interspersed, however, with these fine set pieces are rather standard Sat afternoon Boys Own Adventure stuff featuring Grizzled Lee and his Callow Quartet as they single handedly kill Nazis and Fight For Freedom from N Africa to Sicily to France to Belgium to...well, you get the idea. It's not that these too Hollywood-ized antics clash with the very un romanticized battlefield stuff it's that they're a repudiation of it, as if Fuller is saying, "War is hell, but it's also a helluva lotta fun." Certainly a deflationary statement, especially coming from the director of "Steel Helmet", one of the great cinematic meditations on the bleakness of battle. So let's give it a generous B minus for being a somewhat memorable swansong for a great film maker. PS...When the standout performance in your cast, an assemblage that includes Lee Marvin, is from Mark Hamill then you know there's a problem in the acting dept.
Review of The Big Red One
