The Big Red One
Director: Samuel Fuller
Year Released: 1980
Rating: 3.5
Fuller's 'autobiography' of his squadron in World War II is too quirky to be viewed as fiction, but too unique to be completely dismissed. Told in a choppy, all-over-the-map fashion, the four key Big Red One guys cover a whole lot of territory, fighting from country to country, never getting killed (the 'new guys' always get shot or blown up instead). Sometimes Fuller's tall-tales get to be too much, like when one character triggers an explosion and is lying injured on the ground, and the Captain (Lee Marvin) runs over, tells the guy his testicles were blown off, and then picks one of them up and flings it over his shoulder saying he 'doesn't need it' because 'God gave men two of 'em.' Hard-boiled, campy, memorable and ridiculous, it's typical of the director's output.
