Sorry, this item is not available in
Image not available for
Color:
Image not available

To view this video download Flash Player

 

or
Sign in to turn on 1-Click ordering.
Sell Us Your Item
For up to a $2.35 Gift Card
Trade in
More Buying Choices
Movies@Home Add to Cart
$7.96  & FREE Shipping on orders over $25. Details
MILA TECHNOLOGIES Add to Cart
$7.96  & FREE Shipping on orders over $25. Details
Amazon.com Add to Cart
$9.37  & FREE Shipping on orders over $25. Details
Have one to sell? Sell yours here

The Big Red One - The Reconstruction (Two-Disc Special Edition) (2005)

Lee Marvin , Samuel Fuller  |  R |  DVD
3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (136 customer reviews)

List Price: $26.99
Price: $7.96 & FREE Shipping on orders over $25. Details
You Save: $19.03 (71%)
o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o
In Stock.
Sold by SOUTHWEST MEDIA and Fulfilled by Amazon. Gift-wrap available.
Want it Wednesday, May 29? Choose One-Day Shipping at checkout. Details
Watch Instantly with Rent Buy
The Big Red One   $2.99 $9.99

Other Formats & Versions

Amazon Price New from Used from
DVD Two-Disc Special Edition $7.96  
"Star Trek Into Darkness" Available for Pre-order on Blu-ray and DVD
From director J.J. Abrams comes the next installment in the Star Trek saga, Star Trek Into Darkness. See it at Cinemark theaters now and pre-order on Blu-ray, 3D Blu-ray, DVD, and the Exclusive Starfleet Phaser Gift Set. Shop Star Trek Into Darkness and more in the Star Trek Store. Learn more

Special Offers and Product Promotions

  • Gift Wrap
    Leave the Wrapping to Us
    Sending a gift? Save yourself a little time this Father's Day by taking advantage of gift wrapping for just $3.99. We'll select from our coordinating papers, boxes, and ribbons to make your gift special. Note: Large items might arrive in a reusable cloth gift bag instead of wrapping paper. Learn more

Frequently Bought Together

The Big Red One - The Reconstruction (Two-Disc Special Edition) + Battle of the Bulge + The Longest Day (Two-Disc Collector's Edition)
Price for all three: $27.94

Buy the selected items together

What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?


Product Details

  • Actors: Lee Marvin
  • Directors: Samuel Fuller
  • Format: AC-3, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, NTSC, Special Edition, Subtitled, Widescreen
  • Language: English (Dolby Digital 5.1), French (Dolby Digital 5.1)
  • Subtitles: English, Spanish, French
  • Dubbed: French
  • Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
  • Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1
  • Number of discs: 2
  • Rated: R (Restricted)
  • Studio: Warner Home Video
  • DVD Release Date: May 3, 2005
  • Run Time: 163 minutes
  • Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (136 customer reviews)
  • ASIN: B0007TKNLA
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #25,196 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)
  • Learn more about "The Big Red One - The Reconstruction (Two-Disc Special Edition)" on IMDb

Special Features

  • Over 40 minutes of added footage
  • Alternate scenes
  • Anatomy of a Scene: Watch the director at work and examine the before/after restoration comparisons
  • New documentary The Real Glory: Reconstructing The Big One
  • Profile: The Men Who Make the Movies: Samuel Fuller
  • War department film: The Fighting First
  • 1980 promo reel, theatrical trailer, and TV and radio spots
  • 2004 reconstruction trailer
  • Stills gallery

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

Sam Fuller's The Big Red One was already one of the best films of 1980, despite the fact that the version released to theaters ran barely half as long as the director's cut. Fuller had been America's ballsiest B-movie auteur, an ex-newspaper reporter of the hardnosed breed who made fiercely personal, radically stylized, and politically outspoken films between the early '50s (The Steel Helmet, Pickup on South Street) and the early '60s (Shock Corridor). The Big Red One was his long-dreamt-of account of World War II as experienced by his own squad of the 1st Infantry Division, USA, from the first shot fired (by a dead man, on the coast of North Africa) to the last (in a concentration camp in Czechoslovakia).

Even in the studio-truncated version, there was no shortage of astonishing moments and sequences: the squad choking on dust in a bat-filled cave in North Africa as German tanks clatter past the entrance; Fuller's cold-blooded distillation of the D-Day slaughter on Omaha Beach, with a wrist watch on a dead arm in the surf marking time as the water slopping over it grows redder; the rifle squad delivering a Frenchwoman's baby in a German tank on a battlefield full of corpses; a commando-like raid on Nazi troops bivouacked in a Belgian insane asylum. A quarter-century later, film critic Richard Schickel and Warner Bros. executive Brian Jamieson succeeded in restoring 15 never-seen sequences and fleshing out 23 others to create The Big Red One: The Reconstruction, a "new" film nearly an hour longer.

Above all, BR1: The Reconstruction has a rhythm the 1980 cut lacked. The arc of years, battles, and battlegrounds is so much more satisfying. Greater play is given to Fuller's feeling for children caught up in the sidewash of history and atrocity. And the 2004 cut puts sex back into the movie, not orgiastically but as a fact of life and a rarely forgotten driving force. We can see now that Fuller touched, bluntly and shockingly, on the phenomenon of infiltrators--English-speaking German warriors who donned GI khaki and moved among their enemies waiting for a chance to strike.

It's also apparent, as it was not in 1980, that Lee Marvin as the eternal Sergeant leading the young squad is magnificent. This was Marvin's greatest role, rivaled only by his walking dead man in John Boorman's Point Blank. Just beneath the masterly implacability, we glimpse the tenderness, rage, dark humor, experience, and wisdom beyond guilt that have enabled him to survive, to preserve others and to soldier on. His performance, like Fuller's film, is a masterpiece. --Richard T. Jameson

Product Description

DVD Features:
Audio Commentary
Documentaries
Photo gallery
TV Spot
Theatrical Trailer

Customer Reviews

To me it is the best war movie ever made. Sonicboy  |  21 reviewers made a similar statement
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
196 of 206 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars Jumps to the top of the heap. February 24, 2005
Format:DVD
Whenever I would catch it on cable years and years ago, Sam Fuller's "The Big Red One" was a quirky war movie with strange pacing and a very uneven balance of comedy and tragedy, of high and low-- several great moments strung loosely together. Working on the upcoming DVD, I was not aware of the fact that Fuller had shot 4 hours or that he wished to his dying day that the film would be lengthened, and I was skeptical as I always am with extended versions (this one carries the subtitle "Reconstruction"). I got to look at it several times, once for business and twice more for pleasure, because the film is transformed and made great, and there are so many memorable scenes that one wants to go back to it again and again. 40-plus minutes have been added on, some full scenes, some simply extended bits to old scenes. The narrative structure of the movie is still very free and loose, very episodic, but the greater length is absolutely crucial to the plot, since we are meant to get at least some slight idea of the tedium and homesickness that goes along with being a soldier in an ongoing war. Fleshed out is the character and performance of Lee Marvin--everything that he is capable of as an actor, everything that that stone wall of a face can convey is on display here--tough as all hell but with a simultaneous sweetness that can be, when called upon, heartbreaking. Look at his expression when a gunfight breaks out after the Italian girl places flowers on his helmet--he jabs the rifle into position along his chin and begins firing rounds, his face jerking only slighty with each shot. We don't see anything of the gunfight, only close-up on his face and the expression says nothing and everything all at once--we're meant to meet him halfway and fill in the blanks ourselves. He makes it easy for us because by this point in the movie we know what kind of a man he is. And because this is Sam Fuller, the movie has a diabolical sense of humor, sometimes downright hilarious, as when some of the boys swap sexual fantasies, some of which have become warped and deranged after so much time in battle. Another sequence has the Sergeant and the boys of the One helping to deliver a baby inside the belly of a German tank--the mispronunciation of the French word for "push" setting the stage for some verbal slapstick. This juggling of moods doesn't seem quite so out of place in the longer version, and I get the impression that if they ever decide to cut together the 4-hour picture that Fuller had intended, we still wouldn't tire of the characters or their tours of duty. But as it stands now at 2 hours, 40 minutes, it has been rounded out for us and has jumped to the top of the heap alongside the small handful of truly important movies depicting war. The most common complaint I hear is that the German tanks are clearly American tanks dressed-up. This is true-- if you are searching for dead-on accuracy and detail in set design such as in Private Ryan, this is not for you. "The Big Red One" is a gritty personal little movie that is not burdened by the kind of strained sentimentality that sometimes hampers Spielberg. It can be at times surreal and absurd, but not the kind of surrealism that floats above and transcends the actual war as in "Apocalypse Now"-- it keeps its feet firmly on the ground. The tanks don't pass the test, but the characters more than make up for it... Lee Marvin's nameless Sergeant, stone-faced, intransigent, whose tragic prologue sets up a touching epilogue... Keith Carradine's cigar-chomping, novel-writing Private Zab-- a fill-in for Fuller, who lived all these experiences in his days with the Big Red One-- and Mark Hamill's Griff, the most fleshed-out character, whose unforgettable finale in the Falkenau concentration camp gives new meaning to Conrad's notion of "shelling the bush". The Falkenau scenes, by the way, were shot, like much of the movie, in Israel with Jews playing the Nazi wardens--a surrealistic slap in the face to anyone itching for strict realism in their war flicks. Inconsistencies be damned. This is a great one, and now, thanks to Richard Schickel and his gang, a fuller Fuller movie, a very generous update of a picture that never got a fair chance its first time around.
Was this review helpful to you?
34 of 37 people found the following review helpful
Format:DVD
Sarge (Lee Marvin), first saw combat near the end of WWI. Now, years later, in North Africa in WWII he is a grizzled, war weary, seen it all veteran. Nevertheless, he's still resolute in his duty and a proud wearer of the Red #1 arm patch insignia of the US 1st Infantry Division. He is leader, father, mother, coach and whatever else he needs to be to get his rifle squad through the war. The four principal characters of interest are Griff (Mark Hamill), an expert riflemen but one who can't shoot the enemy if he sees his eyes; he calls it murder, Sarge says otherwise. There is Zab (Robert Carradine) who's main purpose is narrator, his musings provide background and setting; the other two are Johnson and Vinci. We follow this group throughout the movie and the war from North Africa, Sicily, Normandy, Belgium and finally to a concentration camp in Czechoslovakia for a series of emotionally powerful concluding scenes.

There is no glorification of war here; indeed the message is very clear - the only glory in war is surviving. The movie is very creative in introducing characters whose sole purpose, with their demise, is to underline this message. The short careers of both Lemchek and Kaiser are cases in point. The battle scenes are weak and unrealistic but that's not the emphasis. The action scenes that are memorable are the ones with a subtle message; the camera focusing in on the dead soldiers wristwatch in the surf of Normandy, the water turning red with the passing of time; the scene at the asylum in France and the concentration camp scene where Griff overcomes his compunction about shooting while seeing the whites of his enemies eyes.

It's a well crafted movie, with some strong acting from Lee Marvin and Mark Hamill and a movie which delivers it's message in a well thought out and strong ending.

Comment | 
Was this review helpful to you?
61 of 70 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars Longer and Better Movie February 17, 2005
Format:DVD
I remember the original movie when I was younger. I was too young to see it in the theater so I saw it often on HBO. When it came out on videotape and then DVD I purchased it. And then I saw the bigger & badder version. WOW! What a movie. Yes, its almost an hour longer than the original, but it makes it such a better movie. There are scenes added that add more storyline, character buildup and more action. Being this is now 3 hours long it borders on beating out Saving Private Ryan as the best WWII movie ever made. Lee Marvin is at his best, but then again he was always at top form. This movie follows a rifle squad thoughout the battlefields of World War II. It seems the Sargeant (Marvin) and his 4 soldiers seem to always leave battles unharmed while the new soldiers that arrive fall victim to bullets and landmines. In this film you follow the First Infantry through North Africa and Sicily and then to the beaches of Normandy and straight through Germany. If you like long epic war films, then my friend you'll love this one. It's 3 hours well spent.
Comment | 
Was this review helpful to you?
Most Recent Customer Reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars Europe on foot
The Big Red One (Samuel Fuller, 1980, 113')

One of the greatest war movies of all time.

Fuller saw a great deal of action in World War II as a member of the... Read more
Published 10 days ago by Dr René Codoni
2.0 out of 5 stars WEAK attempt at an Ernie Pile -like account of a WWII soldiers...
After seeing "Saving Private Ryan" and "Band of Brothers", this account seemed like milk-toast made with milk that had gone bad. Read more
Published 1 month ago by Frederick A Dube
5.0 out of 5 stars Good reconstruction
This movie now flows like it was originally intended. The reconstruction effort adds needed footage that better explains the whole story.
Published 2 months ago by painter
5.0 out of 5 stars Love it !
Way better than the original, and I loved IT! This is my favorite WWII movie, all the more so with the additional footage.
Published 2 months ago by iorion
5.0 out of 5 stars World War II as experienced by the combatants.
Lee Marvin is terrific in this movie. The raw emotion of the story will move you, as it shifts back and forth from hope, despair, and the humor of everyday things that the... Read more
Published 2 months ago by SuperNova
1.0 out of 5 stars Skip it
This is probably the movie that ended Mark Hamil as an actor of any note. Hollywood, Hamil and Marvin have probably regretted this one for the past 30 years. Read more
Published 2 months ago by Thomas Allen Gordon
5.0 out of 5 stars Sam Fuller - the real man's director
This was a Sam Fuller classic. This was also his own story during WWII. This version of this movie was his history and the only version that you will want to purchase. Read more
Published 3 months ago by Marty A. Silvert
5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent movie
One of the most compelling WWII movies I've ever seen. A deep view inside the minds of men who've been through hell, showing the bonds they form. A must-see.
Published 3 months ago by D Ehrlich
4.0 out of 5 stars One of the best war movies of all time
1. Apocalypse Now
2. Dr. Strangelove
3. Full Metal Jacket
4. Patton
5. The Deer Hunter
6. The Big Red One
7. Glory
8. Read more
Published 3 months ago by Taylor
5.0 out of 5 stars Awesome
The Big Red one is one of my favorite movies of all times. I was in the Army, and really appreciate the believable story.
Published 4 months ago by E. Edge
Search Customer Reviews
Only search this product's reviews

Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought


Forums

Topic From this Discussion
10/22 Be the first to reply
Have something you'd like to share about this product?
Start a new discussion
Topic:
First post:
Prompts for sign-in
 


Search Customer Discussions
Search all Amazon discussions


Look for Similar Items by Category

SOUTHWEST MEDIA Privacy Statement SOUTHWEST MEDIA Shipping Information SOUTHWEST MEDIA Returns & Exchanges