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| The Big Red One - The Reconstruction (Two-Disc Special Edition) | 
 enlarge | Actors: Stephane Audran, Ken Campbell, Robert Carradine, Joseph Clark (ii), Howard Delman
Studio: Warner Home Video
Category: DVD
List Price: $26.98
Buy New: $5.64
You Save: $21.34 (79%)
Buy New/Used/Collectible from $5.61
Avg. Customer Rating:  (83 reviews)
Sales Rank: 9115
Format: Ac-3, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, Dvd-video, Special Edition, Subtitled, Widescreen, Ntsc
Languages: English (Original Language), French (Original Language), German (Original Language), Italian (Original Language), English (Subtitled), Spanish (Subtitled), French (Subtitled), French (Dubbed)
Rating: R (Restricted)
Media: DVD
Running Time: 163 minutes
Number Of Items: 2
Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1
Dimensions (in): 7.1 x 5.4 x 0.6
MPN: WARD70590D
ISBN: 1419810731
UPC: 012569705906
EAN: 9781419810732
ASIN: B0007TKNLA
Release Date: May 3, 2005
Theatrical Release Date: 2004
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Editorial Reviews:
Description
DVD Features:
Audio Commentary
Documentaries
Photo gallery
TV Spot
Theatrical Trailer
Amazon.com
Sam Fuller's The Big Red One was already one of the best films of 1980, despite the fact that the version released to theaters ran barely half as long as the director's cut. Fuller had been America's ballsiest B-movie auteur, an ex-newspaper reporter of the hardnosed breed who made fiercely personal, radically stylized, and politically outspoken films between the early '50s (The Steel Helmet, Pickup on South Street) and the early '60s (Shock Corridor). The Big Red One was his long-dreamt-of account of World War II as experienced by his own squad of the 1st Infantry Division, USA, from the first shot fired (by a dead man, on the coast of North Africa) to the last (in a concentration camp in Czechoslovakia). Even in the studio-truncated version, there was no shortage of astonishing moments and sequences: the squad choking on dust in a bat-filled cave in North Africa as German tanks clatter past the entrance; Fuller's cold-blooded distillation of the D-Day slaughter on Omaha Beach, with a wrist watch on a dead arm in the surf marking time as the water slopping over it grows redder; the rifle squad delivering a Frenchwoman's baby in a German tank on a battlefield full of corpses; a commando-like raid on Nazi troops bivouacked in a Belgian insane asylum. A quarter-century later, film critic Richard Schickel and Warner Bros. executive Brian Jamieson succeeded in restoring 15 never-seen sequences and fleshing out 23 others to create The Big Red One: The Reconstruction, a "new" film nearly an hour longer. Above all, BR1: The Reconstruction has a rhythm the 1980 cut lacked. The arc of years, battles, and battlegrounds is so much more satisfying. Greater play is given to Fuller's feeling for children caught up in the sidewash of history and atrocity. And the 2004 cut puts sex back into the movie, not orgiastically but as a fact of life and a rarely forgotten driving force. We can see now that Fuller touched, bluntly and shockingly, on the phenomenon of infiltrators--English-speaking German warriors who donned GI khaki and moved among their enemies waiting for a chance to strike. It's also apparent, as it was not in 1980, that Lee Marvin as the eternal Sergeant leading the young squad is magnificent. This was Marvin's greatest role, rivaled only by his walking dead man in John Boorman's Point Blank. Just beneath the masterly implacability, we glimpse the tenderness, rage, dark humor, experience, and wisdom beyond guilt that have enabled him to survive, to preserve others and to soldier on. His performance, like Fuller's film, is a masterpiece. --Richard T. Jameson
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| Customer Reviews: Read 78 more reviews...
 3 stars out of 4 January 1, 2009
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
Though The Big Red One should not be mistaken for a realistic movie (the platoon somehow is involved in every single campaign of the war), the film moves very quickly for an 150+ minute movie and is consistently engaging; it's not a great movie, but it will stay with you.
 A true masterpiece! November 16, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
No need to rehash plot points, but suffice it to say that The Big Red One - in all it's restored glory as Fuller intended - is a true masterpiece. One of the best WWII films ever made, with heartfelt performances and great action. Watching Mark Hammill empty a clip into the german soldier who took cover in the oven towards the end is one of the most chilling scenes in movie history - showing the reality of war and how brutal an affair it always is.
Disregard the idiotic complaints here...they are obviously written by kids with no appreciation for real film making. "Too long?" laughable. And for those who didn't find it believable, reality often is stranger than fiction - everything in the film is based on Fuller's own experiences.
Fuller rocks September 18, 2008
Having seen the original version of Sam Fuller's The Big Red One, years ago, on television, I could see glimmers of something far grander, but did not know what it could be, and given the callowness of my youth, even had I known what was missing, I could not have mentally interpolated back what the studio that financed the film, Lorimar, had cut. Fuller was basically a B film auteur, having made his reputation on 1950s and 1960s B war films (The Steel Helmet, Merrill's Marauders), and the famous- or infamous, Shock Corridor, yet The Big Red One, which was a fictionalization of his real World War Two experiences with the First Infantry Division of the U.S. Army, was, even in its bowdlerized version, considered his masterpiece. And it's a good solid war film. However, The Reconstruction version, adding in over forty-seven minutes on this two disk DVD version, is a truly great war film, and ranks only below Terrence Malick's The Thin Red Line and Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now as the greatest war film ever made. I would rank it with Regeneration, Patton, and Full Metal Jacket as the head of the next tier of war films. However, unlike Coppola's expanded Apocalypse Now Redux DVD version, with its questionable reinstatement of some bloated and unnecessary scenes, all of the restored scenes in the restored version of Fuller's film only enhance this film's narrative and characterization.
The tale is straightforward, and told from a GI's perspective, rather than from some omniscient eye in the sky. It is lean, filled with little moments, shorn of much visual poesy, yet, despite that, it is very poetic, albeit in totally different ways than the films of Malick and Coppola, which were self-conscious art films, in the best sense of the word. As in all of Fuller's war films, we know these men from just a few brushstrokes, but they are not stereotypes, like the ridiculously banal grunts in Steven Spielberg's ridiculous schlocksterpiece Saving Private Ryan. The main characters are five Americans and one German. The leader of the Americans is an unnamed sergeant (although he is sometimes called Possum) who starts the film, and ends World War One, killing a surrendering German soldier with his knife, four hours after the Armistice, and the violation of that code of war haunts him ever after. The scene, shot in black and white, and highlighted by a shell-shocked horse's attack on Marvin, under a large crucifix, is beautifully wrought, acted, and written, and sets the film's tone about the enduring irrationality and absurdity of war without having to delve into comedy like M*A*S*H or Catch-22 do.... All of this, plus the eye level view of a grunt, make this film something special. And, unlike Oliver Stone, Fuller does not need to wave his political banner in a viewer's face. Also, Lee Marvin is simply fantastic- this is his greatest role, and he should have won an Oscar for it, even though Hollywood would never honor a man like Fuller. Compared to Tom Hanks' sergeant in Spielberg's garbage, Marvin's is the kind of man men would follow into battle, and die for. The reconstructed film opens with the quote, `This is fictional life based on factual death,' and ends with an epitaph for Fuller. Never has a film's epigraph been more on target, nor more poignant. The Big Red One: The Reconstruction will be de rigueur viewing for war film buffs as long as films are watched. Who needs an Oscar with that sort of legacy?
 The Big Borrrring One August 7, 2008
0 out of 5 found this review helpful
This movie SUCKED Lee Marvin leading a bunch dopey looking GIs ! It was confusing to follow . The Longest Day was cool but this movie with Marvin dressed as a arab in a German hospial . The movie was foolish from beginning to end !
A Solid WWII Movie Which Went From Good To Very Good September 8, 2007
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
This "reconstructed" DVD, a version that came out several years ago, adding 49 minutes to the original 1980 movie is a very good one. The "old" version was good,too, but this newer version makes the film even better.
For men - and that's who will primarily watch this movie because it's a guy's flick with no romance and no women leads - this keeps the action coming, but without overdoing it. You can different kinds of action scenes, too, not just people shooting at one another.
I also appreciated the photography. It's a good visual movie. The added footage looked sharper and clearer than the previously shown, but either way it was nicely filmed and directed. Of course, the director is the famous Sam Fuller, who did a number of tough film noirs, among other things.
Speaking of tough, the person who makes this movie a notch above average is Lee Marvin. He is just excellent as the tough-on-the-outside-but-soft-hearted underneath commanding officer, known only as "The Sergeant." With his deep voice and weathered face, The language was much milder in here than you find in more modern films, although it can be crude in a few spots. There are no f-words, for example.
The story with narration by one of the soldiers, tells of Marvin and his handful of men who travel and do battle from North Africa to Sicily, then Italy, the beaches of Normandy on D- Day and into Germany in addition to a few other memorable stops such as "an insane asylum."
It's long, but I never found it boring and the men never stay too long in one spot.
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