This blog entry is part of my “movie year countdown round #2”. Read more about that here.
The Big Red One
The reconstruction of this movie released a few years ago is practically an entirely new movie. I've never seen the original release, but the reconstruction is over 43% longer.
It's unfortunate that Fuller couldn't see the film in a more complete form. Most of what he shot was cut out of the version he saw when he was alive. Although I say it's unfortunate for him because from seeing many of the special features on the DVD this was probably one of the nearest and dearest to him of all his movie projects. Even though of all of his movies that I have seen this is not my favorite.
I generally have an initial aversion to films that may be labeled as "epic". And how many World War II movies don't try to fit that term? On top of that the structure of this film is that it jumps suddenly to different times and places. Sometimes we skip over many months or maybe even years in the lives of the main characters. I'm not sure because it doesn't always specify. And we are often in many different places around Europe and Africa. The scenes are often described as vignettes, recounting unusual stories that were often inspired by actual events that occurred to Fuller or were recounted to him by real people he knew. I like the fact that he can cut right to the interesting stuff without developing any unnecessary context. But there are a few times, especially in the beginning of the movie where the lack of context keeps you from letting yourself get involved in the story because you are just scratching your head about too many things and trying to follow and remember little blips of information that go by so fast. At the very beginning of the film there is already a scene where the main characters get separated from their sergeant. We don't even know who these people are so I was trying to figure out what their relationship was and how much we were supposed to care about all of this. It felt like a moment that should have gone near the end of the film.
Maybe I can't blame Fuller for this since the movie was originally taken from hims and cut up. Maybe there was stuff that he filmed or a way that he planned to edit it that would have been different. But the reconstruction team sure seemed to have a lot to work with.
But I'm kind of criticizing a movie that I really thought was great. Maybe I'm just trying to justify giving it an 8 instead of a 9 or 10. What I'm trying to say is that maybe I wouldn't have appreciated the movie as much if I wasn't able to watch all of the special features on the DVD as well. I'd recommend you check them out if you rent this.
Rating: 8/10