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The Big Red One

Drama · War

The Big Red One

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

6.7(340) 5/28/1980 1h 53m
DramaWar

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.

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Trailer

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Top Cast

Lee Marvin

Lee Marvin

The Sergeant

Mark Hamill

Mark Hamill

Griff

Robert Carradine

Robert Carradine

Zab

Bobby Di Cicco

Bobby Di Cicco

Vinci

Kelly Ward

Kelly Ward

Johnson

Stéphane Audran

Stéphane Audran

Walloon

Siegfried Rauch

Siegfried Rauch

Schroeder

Serge Marquand

Serge Marquand

Rensonnet

Directed by

Samuel Fuller

Production

Reviews

Wuchak

7/10

10/23/2025

**_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

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