|
|
|
You can tell this is a vanity labor-of-love project for its writer/director (I don't remember his name), grudgingly approved by some mismanaged movie studio on a sadly-limited budget. Unfortunately, the guy's second-level creative status shines through in every frame.
The "Big Red One" is a designation and patch created during WWI for an artillery division of the U.S. Army, as we learn in an all-too-obvious introductory black-and-white flashback. Thirty years later its originator (Lee Marvin) is leading his young squad into various battles all over the WWII European theatre, losing most of his men in the process.
It's an antiwar film with all the subtlety of a Panzer tank: ace sniper Mark Hamill questions the morality of his participation in this officially-sanctioned and orchestrated death melee, then cut to a German soldier offering the same internal angst. Of course, they both die.
The directing is terrible, the story is clumsy and repetitive, the characters are largely interchangeable. In this post-Saving Private Ryan era, a limited budget that allows a cast of twenty to represent a D-Day invasion just doesn't cut it.
I'm glad the guy got to make his movie, but don't bother with this Big Bad One.