The Big Red One: The Reconstruction

Long considered a prime example of studio butchering, The Big Red One was trimmed by nearly a third of its running time in 1980, an offense that was compounded by the fact that its director, Sam Fuller, had wanted to make this film -- based on his experiences as an infantryman in World War II -- for more than twenty years. He almost made the film in the late 50s with John Wayne playing the gruff squad commander (played here by Lee Marvin, in a career high performance) but, by the time he made the film again in 1980, he was only able to raise a ridiculously low budget. This is astounding in light of the scope that this new version reveals.

Following five characters over the course of two years, we get to know Zab (Robert Carradine), a cigar-chomping sarcastic writer who hopes to turn his combat experience into the material for a novel, Griff (Mark Hamill), a sensitive artistic type who has trouble with the concept of kill or be killed, Vinci (Bobby DiCicco), an Italian who hopes to help his father open a bagel shop back in New York, and Johnson (Kelly Ward) who, in one of the film's most amusing moments, pinch-hits for one of the departed members of the squad at a party that quickly develops into an orgy of "boku femmes". They share what Fuller believes is the common dream of all soldiers: to survive and come back home in one piece.

It's often written that Zab is the stand in for Fuller -- he even performs a run across the beach on D-Day that Fuller himself did in real life -- but, as his daughter Samatha Fuller (!) points out in one of two terrific documentaries included in this 2-disc set, all of the characters, including Lee Marvin's, are reflections of different sides of the director.

This probably explains why so many of the character arcs are so powerful. The scene in which Hamill's Griff realizes that there are times when killing is necessary to stop other horrors is a prime example. This also explains why the elongated version, more filled with the insanity of war (sometimes literally), is enough to make you want to go out and key the cars of the idiots at Lorimar who decided the film needed to be shorter.

Luckily, the folks at Warner Home Video really go out of their way to set things right with this new version and its DVD release. A commentary by film critic and documentarian Richard Schickel, who produced the new edit, is the lone extra on the first disc but, as stated before, two feature-length documentaries are included on the second disc. We get nearly a dozen alternate scenes, before-and-after comparisons of other scenes, outtakes, the original "promo reel" that contained several of the lost sequences, trailers, and I'm sure there's a kitchen sink somewhere.

The first documentary, "The Real Glory," is about the making of the film. It features interviews with the younger cast members -- sadly, there is no interview footage of Lee Marvin -- although Sam Fuller pops up from beyond the grave via an interview that was part of the basis for the second documentary on the disc, "The Men Who Made The Movies: Sam Fuller."

This episode of Richard Schickel's TV series about filmmakers gives you an overview of the man and his career, from his early days as an independent filmmaker to his years under the generous (and insane) patronage of Darryl F. Zanuck to his return to low-budget quickies that were almost always better than their budgets and genres should have allowed. They were the unmistakable product of one man's mind.

Great movie, great transfer, good extras. For God's sake, just go out and buy the goddamn picture. If you're a war movie fan, the disc is also available as part of a boxed set (Battlefront Europe) that includes other war classics The Dirty Dozen and Battleground, among others. -- Christopher Hyatt