The Big Red One 1980

John Hartl, Seattle Times: Even though it has gained more than 45 minutes, it doesn't feel longer. Scenes that were choppy or half-baked are now allowed to play out as Fuller intended. Read more

Ty Burr, Boston Globe: The director's gift for bare-knuckles lyricism rescues scene after scene. Read more

Kevin Crust, Los Angeles Times: 'The Reconstruction,' which clocks in at 2 hours, 43 minutes, with not a single extraneous frame, elevates the work from a robust genre film to a full-blown epic. Read more

Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader: Read more

Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly: If you don't elect to watch The Big Red One through the lens of Sam Fuller's mystique ... you'll realize that it has been celebrated in ways that essentially make virtues of its flaws. Read more

Scott Foundas, L.A. Weekly: 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. Read more

Stephen Whitty, Newark Star-Ledger: In its own rough and still unfinished way, The Big Red One works -- as a memoir of a time, and a movie of the war. Read more

Jami Bernard, New York Daily News: The combination of old-time Hollywood valor and ahead-of-its-time surprises makes this restoration a big event. Read more

A.O. Scott, New York Times: Seven years after Fuller's death, 24 years after its initial, botched release, and almost 60 years after V-E day, The Big Red One is finally here, in a form close to what Fuller intended. Read more

Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times: Read more

Charles Taylor, Salon.com: As the longest and biggest of Fuller's movies, it magnifies the essence -- good and bad -- of his work. Read more

Colin Covert, Minneapolis Star Tribune: A big, impressive slab of drama -- maybe not a masterpiece or an epic, but a colorful story that sweeps you up and covers a lot of ground at a fast clip. Read more

Time Out: Read more

Variety: Read more

J. Hoberman, Village Voice: The Big Red One isn't even Fuller's greatest war film. Of those, I'd rank it fourth -- but that's not half bad. Read more

Michael O'Sullivan, Washington Post: What the movie may lack in Saving Private Ryan-style gloss, it more than makes up for in authenticity, or, in other words, heart. Read more

Stephen Hunter, Washington Post: Alas, the lost version of Samuel Fuller's The Big Red One of 1980 has been found -- reassembled, actually, by the distinguished film critic Richard Schickel -- and it's a lot less than legendary. It isn't even very good. Read more