A grand-style, idiosyncratic war epic, with wonderful poetic ideas, intense emotions, and haunting images rich in metaphysical portent.

To see this seamless "reconstruction" - consisting of some 15 entirely new sequences as well as augmentations to 23 others - is to behold a masterpiece revealed.

Marvin's performance, much enhanced by "The Reconstruction," is a marvel.

Marvin's taciturn performance--a moving demonstration of masculine grace under pressure--may be his finest.

It's a terrific war yarn, a picture of palpable raw power which manages both Intense intimacy and great scope at the same time. (Review of Original Release)

What the movie may lack in "Saving Private Ryan"-style gloss, it more than makes up for in authenticity, or, in other words, heart.

The combination of old-time Hollywood valor and ahead-of-its-time surprises makes this restoration a big event.

Powerful, humorous, and touching. (Review of Original Release)

In some respects a less tidy film than before, particularly when it veers off into a subplot involving a Nazi soldier played by Siegfried Rauch, the new cut mostly retains the original's virtues while adding details and episodes that make it more recognizably a Fuller film.

The Big Red One, for all its uncompromising brutality, is viscerally, angrily alive. Fuller was lucky to survive the war. It is our good fortune that this film, a tribute to his luck (and to those who did not share it), has come back to life.

The Big Red One, for all its uncompromising brutality, is viscerally, angrily alive. Fuller was lucky to survive the war. It is our good fortune that this film, a tribute to his luck (and to those who did not share it), has come back to life.

Fuller was never a poetic director, but in The Big Red One he finds what in himself was closest to lyricism. Fuller's movie is like flowers thrown on a battlefield in remembrance, and it makes the overblown war movies that have followed seem like cheap and tatty Veteran's Day poppies.

Hard-boiled, filled with action, held together by male camaraderie, directed with a lean economy of action. It's one of the most expensive B-pictures ever made, and I think that helps it fit the subject. "A" war movies are about War, but "B" war movies are about soldiers. (Review of Original Release)

Reissued with the addition of 50 minutes trimmed from the original 1980 cut, Fuller's only A-budget movie is still among the lesser works of this frequently brilliant filmmaker.