The Big Red One

"Only chance could have thrown them together. Now, nothing can pull them apart."

1980 2h 42m EN

👍

6.7

SOLID

🍅

88%

FRESH

👌

METACRITIC

⭐

7.1

IMDB

★6.7TMDB · 359🍅88%Rotten Tomatoes●77Metacritic★7.1IMDB · 22,238

DramaWar

Synopsis

Spoiler shield

A veteran sergeant of World War I leads a squad in World War II, always in the company of the survivor Pvt. Griff, the writer Pvt. Zab, the Sicilian Pvt. Vinci and Pvt. Johnson, in Vichy French Africa, Sicily, D-Day at Omaha Beach, Belgium and France, and ending in a concentration camp in Czechoslovakia where they face the true horror of war.

“Only chance could have thrown them together. Now, nothing can pull them apart.”

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Cast

Lee Marvin
The Sergeant
Mark Hamill
Griff
Robert Carradine
Zab
Bobby Di Cicco
Vinci
Kelly Ward
Johnson
Stéphane Audran
Walloon
Siegfried Rauch
Schroeder
Serge Marquand
Rensonnet

Credits

Behind the camera

Director: Samuel Fuller
Writers: Samuel Fuller
Languages: English, Italian, German, French
Countries: United States of America

Want more? Switch to Cinephile mode in the header for DP, composer, budget, box office, production companies, keywords, and release history.

Did you know?

Fun facts 🍿

1 / 8

RUNTIME

Did you know

Clocks in at 162 minutes — on the longer side of feature-length cinema.

MoodPlayr · trivia#01

2 / 8

MONEY

Did you know

Shot for just $4.5M — micro-budget by Hollywood standards.

MoodPlayr · trivia#02

3 / 8

ERA

Did you know

46 years old — old enough to be someone's favourite childhood film.

MoodPlayr · trivia#03

4 / 8

WORLD

Did you know

Dialogue crosses 4 languages: English, Italian, German, French.

MoodPlayr · trivia#04

5 / 8

DIRECTOR

Did you know

Directed by Samuel Fuller, shot by Adam Greenberg. Note their partnership — DPs and directors often return to each other across a career.

MoodPlayr · trivia#05

6 / 8

DIRECTOR

Did you know

Original score by Dana Kaproff. Worth a dedicated listen after — most great films lose half their impact without the score.

MoodPlayr · trivia#06

7 / 8

DIRECTOR

Did you know

Editor Morton Tubor shaped the rhythm. On an edit-heavy film, the editor does more to control your pulse than the director.

MoodPlayr · trivia#07

8 / 8

CAST

Did you know

Lee Marvin and Mark Hamill and Robert Carradine carry the top of the cast.

MoodPlayr · trivia#08

Cinephile deep dive

The take

Samuel Fuller directs. Adam Greenberg behind the camera. Dana Kaproff scores. Morton Tubor cuts. A long sit — settle in. Profitable at the box office. Produced in United States of America. Dialogue in English, Italian, German, French.

Trivia

Things worth knowing

1Clocks in at 162 minutes — on the longer side of feature-length cinema.
2Shot for just $4.5M — micro-budget by Hollywood standards.
346 years old — old enough to be someone's favourite childhood film.
4Dialogue crosses 4 languages: English, Italian, German, French.
5Directed by Samuel Fuller, shot by Adam Greenberg. Note their partnership — DPs and directors often return to each other across a career.
6Original score by Dana Kaproff. Worth a dedicated listen after — most great films lose half their impact without the score.
7Editor Morton Tubor shaped the rhythm. On an edit-heavy film, the editor does more to control your pulse than the director.
8Lee Marvin and Mark Hamill and Robert Carradine carry the top of the cast.
9Marketing tagline: "Only chance could have thrown them together. Now, nothing can pull them apart.".
10IMDB entry: tt0080437 — still the authoritative cross-reference for credits and trivia.
11Classified under 11 themes, including "sicily, italy", "africa", "concentration camp", "world war ii".

The technical file

Cinematography: Adam Greenberg
Original score: Dana Kaproff
Editing: Morton Tubor
Makeup / hair: Blanche Shuler
Sound: David Dockendorf
Runtime: 162 min · 2h 42m
Aspect ratio (typical): 1.37:1 (Academy)
Status: Released
Budget: $4,500,000
Box office: $7,206,220
Return: 160% of budget
Original language: EN
Certification (US): PG
IMDB: The Big Red One (1980)
Rotten Tomatoes: 88% 🍅 Fresh
Metacritic: 77/100
IMDB rating: 7.1/10 · 22,238 votes
MPAA: R

Awards

2 wins & 2 nominations total

Also by

Samuel Fuller

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Trailers & featurettes

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Community reviews

What people are saying

Wuchak2025-10-23
★ 7/10
Sam Fuller’s WW2 tour of North Africa, Sicily and France-to-Czechoslovakia Shot in the summer of 1978, this was inspired by Fuller’s experiences in the war with Robert Carradine as Private Zab representing him. It’s a lot to cram into less than 2 hours, and this explains the criticisms that the film comes across as a collection of incidents with little character development. Yet Fuller wanted to include the highlights of his 2.5 years in the war and this delivers as far as that goes. Some say it’s a commentary on how war is an ongoing circle of Hell. The problem with this interpretation is that the war does end when the characters wind up at a concentration camp in Sokolov, which is located a dozen miles from the border of eastern Germany in what is today the Czech Republic. I like the way it focuses on the five protagonists (led by Lee Marvin) with everything happening from their limited point of view. Isn’t that precisely the way it is for foot soldiers in combat? A good example is their landing in Normandy where you don’t get a sense of the mammoth operation, but rather just their costly experience in which they interestingly use a Bangalore torpedo to clear the way. Some bits are so peculiar that they just had to be pulled from real-life, such as a French woman giving birth inside a Panzer tank or the German-held monastery in Belgium being used as an insane asylum. To survive with their sanity intact, the guys develop a kind of levity amidst the life-or-death madness of it all. The four privates don’t talk of “back home” because their lives are just starting whilst the hardened veteran (Marvin) focuses on getting himself and as many of these young men through the combat so they can actually have a future. Neither the past nor the future matters in such extreme warfare, all that matters is fulfilling the current mission and, hopefully, surviving with all your appendages. The second half involves the Normandy landing and fighting through France, Belgium and Germany before making it to the deathcamp. You could say it’s the quickie version of the 11.5 hours “Band of Brothers,” which debuted over two decades later. Some criticize that the movie feels dated and plays more like a WW2 flick from the 1960s. I suppose that’s because it was initially conceived in the late ’50s. Dated or not, it influenced future war flicks, such as “Platoon,” and was the precursor to the aforementioned “Band of Brothers.” No, it’s not on the level of those great war films or others, but it gets the job done and is good enough. Think of it as Lee Marvin’s character from “The Dirty Dozen” leading a group of greenhorns through the Mediterranean and Europe. It runs 1 hour, 53 minutes, but there’s a 2005 director’s cut subtitled “The Reconstruction” that adds about 47 minutes of footage. It was shot in Israel, Ireland and the Sierra Madre Mountains northwest of Los Angeles. GRADE: B/B-

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