Samuel Fuller is a director that I’m just discovering. He’s a big influence on Scorsese. His films are gritty, often dealing with violence.
THE BIG RED ONE follows a sergeant and four soldiers through various battles during World War II. Like SAVING PRIVATE RYAN – or maybe even more so – this film really shows what it is like to be a grunt. Unlike RYAN, BIG RED ONE has no overall mission to drive the narrative. It’s episodic, watching the soldiers move from mission to mission. I got a really good sense of the randomness of war and how death is always lurking around the corner.
Lee Marvin (DIRTY DOZEN) stars as The Sergeant, a survivor of World War I. He’s a grizzled war veteran, who shows little emotion, but is also touched deeply by the senselessness of war, especially when it affects small children. His four privates include: the film’s narrator and pulp writer Zab (Robert Carradine, REVENGE OF THE NERDS), violence skittish Griff (Mark Hamill, STAR WARS), no-BS, Brooklyn-born Italian Vinci (Bobby DiCicco, THE PHILADELPHIA EXPERIMENT) and baby-faced medic Johnson (Kelly Ward, GREASE).
The film shows how survival is a great bonding element in war. The four privates have one major thing in common – they’ve seen a lot of other soldiers come and die, but they have stayed alive out of skill and luck. Fuller brilliantly develops each character through the various episodes, especially with the other grunts who meet a less favorable end. Fuller finds wonderful visuals to highlight his scenes. The highlights for me include: the castrating bomb, the battlefield birth, the insane asylum, the dead soldiers’ watch, Griff’s experience at the crematorium and The Sergeant with the Jewish boy. These are just to name the best -- to name all the great scenes would be to list almost every scene in the film.
The performances are solid. Marvin is perfect for his role. If any message can be attained from the film it would be that war is senseless and heartless. Politicians and generals make decisions and devise plans for the grunts on the ground to carry out even though it’s the grunts that have to play Russian roulette with their lives. The film is simply great. It’s nice to say there is another good film that stars Mark Hamill. I eagerly await the longer director’s cut of this film, which should be coming out on DVD in 2005.
Rick DeMott
Animation World Network
Creator of Rick's Flicks Picks
