At a 2 hour 43 minute run time, the producers could have added twenty minutes of commercials and made it what it should have been, a series of six 30-minute television episodes built around various themes: Invasion of North Africa, Storming Sicily, D-Day, Into Belgium, the Battle of the Bulge, and Death Camp Liberation. But even if they had, the series wouldn't have had the emotional impact of BAND OF BROTHERS, perhaps the finest miniseries ever broadcast on TV and, along with the feature length SAVING PRIVATE RYAN, the best depiction of the World War II ground war in Western Europe ever made.

THE BIG RED ONE follows one infantry platoon, led by its sergeant (Lee Marvin) from 1942 to 1945. Various characters come and go, i.e. are killed off, but a core of four survive from beginning to end, Privates Griff (Mark Hamill), Zab (Robert Carradine), Vinci (Bobby Di Cicco), and Johnson (Kelly Ward). If it was the intent of the film's director, Samuel Fuller, to portray a tough veteran (Marvin) paternalistically guiding his charges through the perils of combat, he failed in my opinion. Marvin's character remains pretty much detached and stone-faced throughout. He's certainly no Captain Miller (Tom Hanks) of SAVING PRIVATE RYAN or Captain Winters (Damian Lewis) of BAND OF BROTHERS. I wasn't inspired to follow Marvin's Sergeant into battle, much less across the street. And there was more fighters' camaraderie demonstrated in fifteen minutes of either RYAN or BROTHERS than in the entirety of THE BIG RED ONE.

There were, admittedly, some good scenes: delivering a French woman's baby in a German tank, the ruse employed by a female resistance leader while helping the Sergeant and his men capture a Belgian insane asylum occupied by German artillery spotters, the liberation of the concentration camp in Czechoslovakia. But, at best, it was all small screen stuff. Moreover, the combat scenes were cheesy and unconvincing compared to those in RYAN and BROTHERS. In the latter two, the viewer could easily believe he was watching real soldiers fighting for their lives and those of their buddies. In THE BIG RED ONE, it was just actors playing make-believe war.

This is soooo much better than the original
Review date: 2005-08-27 Rating: 8 out of 10

The original was a just under average WWII film. Seeing the original, it is 300% better. It makes sense. The voice-over has gone. It takes in battles that were important, but not famous.

If this film had been released, Saving Ryans Privates wouldnt have had the same impact, not because of the war scenes, but the humanity.

It takes the film from a standard action hero WWII fil, to a proper take on the human side of war.

Original (in my opinion) : 2/5
Reconstruction (this one) : 4.5/5

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