The Big Red One (1980)

I had put this film off, because it runs 162 minutes. How serendipitous that I should get around to it on Memorial Day weekend.

The title's emphasis falls on "One," as in the numeral 1, sported in red by the 1st Infantry Division of the U.S. Army in World War II. Writer-director Sam Fuller was a veteran, which may explain why the narrator, Pvt. Zab (Robert Carradine), says he enlisted in order to get book material. His squad has the curious distinction of five men who never die or get badly wounded while the replacements drop like flies.

I mentioned before that I have trouble distinguishing individuals in war flicks because I make a point not to get attached to them. Well, the invincible guys here are exceptions -- and have the same problem with regard to their comrades: Even after rather personal interactions, they usually don't bother to remember names or nicknames. It takes something unusual for them to feel a need to honor a fallen hero. Kinda increases my own sense of guilt.

So who else is on the squad? The oddly unnamed sergeant (Lee Marvin) had served in WWI and brings a bit of baggage; fairly smart, he vacillates between being a moral compass -- especially when it comes to children -- and making the most morally questionable decisions. Pvt. Griff (early Mark Hamill!) is a good shot but can't bring himself to shoot people, at first. Pvt. Vinci (Bobby Di Cicco), not letting his heritage stop him from fighting Italians, makes a decent translator in Sicily while aspiring to open a bagel bakery. And Pvt. Johnson (Kelly Ward) gets more than he bargained for as the one troop with medical training.

Netflix describes the epic as "alternately funny, absurd, and deeply moving." That makes it sound like Kelly's Heroes, but it contains no more humor than Three Kings. Indeed, IMDb doesn't list comedy among its genres. It may not be quite as serious overall as the previous year's Apocalypse Now, but it is at least as violent and tragic.

As my tags indicate, the division moves around a lot in the course of the story. We get to hear dialog in French, German, and Italian. It's a little jarring when we see two characters who are supposed to be speaking one of those languages but, because there are no American or British characters around, we hear accented English instead.

If TBRO is "unsung" as Netflix says, I suspect it has something to do with bloating. There are plenty of memorable scenes, but they feel so different from one another, often with pretty abrupt transitions, that it's almost as if a bunch of war movies got cut up and taped together. Fuller must have reached too far to maximize the picture of war as he saw it.

Still, I do think it's worth checking out when you have the time. It will repeatedly stir the mind and heart. And stomach if you're not ready.