Reeling Backward: "The Big Red One" (1980)

"This is fictional life
Based on factual death."

So writer/director Samuel Fuller announces at the beginning of "The Big Red One," a World War II picture based largely on his own experiences as a soldier with the Army's 1st Infantry Division. As Fuller showed with "The Steel Helmet," he had a great flair for war stories that swell with a grizzled sort of authenticity.

Fuller had been trying to make the movie since the 1950s, and actually began scouting some locations until he butted heads with mogul Jack Warner. He had to wait another quarter-century before "Red" came out in 1980.

I think the wait probably served the film better, giving it more distance and perspective from the events portrayed in it, which spans 1942 to 1945, and most every front of the war in Europe from North Africa, Sicily, D-Day, France, Belgium, the invasion of Germany and the liberation of a Czechoslovakian concentration camp for Jews.

The delay also helped with the casting of the leading man, the gruff and taciturn Sergeant (no name ever given, or needed). The studio wanted to cast John Wayne, who no doubt would have insisted on a more purely heroic role -- sort of what he did in the underwhelming "Sands of Iwo Jima."

Instead, Fuller was able to cast Lee Marvin, whose steely countenance and gravel-pit voice is a perfect fit for the war-blasted commander of a rifle squad. Marvin fell backwards into acting, doing bit parts and villain roles, then became an unexpected leading man in his 40s and 50s.

If anything, at times Fuller makes Sarge a little too tough and unlikeable. I think of a scene where a green recruit steps on a tripwire and sets off an explosion. As the stunned man struggles to maintain consciousness, his flesh scorched and his body torn, Sarge blithely tells him the tripwires are not meant to kill, just castrate. He reaches down to the man's nethers, pulls up a horrific bloody pulp of flesh, and tells the kid it's one of his testicles. "That's why God gave you two," he barks, heaving the valuable piece anatomy over his shoulder like dog scraps.

"The Big Red One" has a deliberately episodic feel, concentrating on Sarge and his Four Horsemen, as the battalion commanders name the quartet of infantrymen who survive with him through every stage of the war. They are survivors, careful killing machines who know how to take life while preserving their own. The new recruits arrive and die so quickly, the core group doesn't even bother to learn their names.

Mark Hamill, in between "Star Wars" movies, had one of his more substantive roles as Griff, a marksman who is reluctant to kill, dubbing it "murder." Sarge tersely explains that if you've got generals giving orders and a piece of paper declaring it war, then it's simply killing. He should know, having accidentally murdered a German at the end of the last war four hours after armistice had been declared.

The movie is quite explicit that one of Sarge's jobs is to shoot any man who refuses to do his duty, and there's an amazing scene during the depiction of D-Day where he actually takes a few shots at Griff as a warning. Griff is all alone on the beach, pinned down by enemy fire, trying to blow a break in the barbed wire barricade using a bangalore torpedo. A half-dozen others have already died, and when Griff freezes up it's clear Sarge is not above adding another to that number, even if it's one of his Four Horsemen.

Robert Carradine is the narrator as Zab, a brash young writer constantly chewing on a cigar, who clearly acts as a stand-in for Fuller himself. There's a harrowing scene where Zab crawls across a line of dead men to bring news to the colonel, and pauses over the corpse of one man whose guts are splayed all over the place. His face almost touching the dead man, Zab calmly pulls a fresh cigar out of the man's pocket to replace his own sodden one.

Less prominent roles go to Bobby Di Cicco as Vinci, a loudmouth Italian, and Kelly Ward as Johnson, a farm boy with hemorrhoids.

In his review of the movie, Roger Ebert called "The Big Red One" the most expensive B-movie ever made, noting that A war films are always about the war, while B war movies are about the soldiers. I'd disagree with that -- "Saving Private Ryan" is clearly about the soldiers, and could hardly be called a B-picture. Both films have similar themes, about the bonds that men form during the horrors of battle.

Ultimately, they fight to survive and they fight for each other, not for a vague concept of "war." In his narration, Zab admits that they never understood what the war was really about.

"The Big Red One" was edited down considerably in its initial release, but today is available in an uncut version approaching three hours in length. It never feels like the movie dawdles, even as it sprawls over months and years of the war's progress. My only complaint might be the undue prominence of Siegfried Rauch as Schroeder, a stalwart German soldier who has several encounters with the squad (unbeknownst to them).

It's all setting up a final encounter that mirrors the opening one where Sarge stabbed a German to death after the war was officially over. Upon realizing Schroeder is still alive, the squad patches him up and saves his life, which Zab dubs the biggest joke of the entire unfunny war.

"The Big Red One" has been called one of the forgotten great war movies. I think that's overpraising it, but it's certainly a worthwhile and offbeat take on the genre.

3 stars out of four

Reeling Backward: "The Steel Helmet"

I wonder what the cinematic heroes of most World War II movies would make of Sgt. Zack, the protagonist of 1951's "The Steel Helmet."

Zack has guts, but he's certainly not what you would call heroic. His biggest priority is making it out of combat alive. He's gruff, insulting and racially insensitive. When a South Korean boy saves his life, he calls him a "gook."

"Steel Helmet" was released just a few months into the fighting of the Korean War, and was the first Hollywood movie made about that conflict. Writer/director/producer Samuel Fuller shot it in just 10 days for a little over $100,000 -- peanuts, even in 1952. According to legend, Fuller wrote the script in one week.

The story opens with a static image of a soldier's helmet. Eventually, the helmet rises and we see the eyes and then the face of the man wearing it. Zack is bound by the hands and by all rights should be dead. After his unit surrendered, the GIs were tied up and shot. A bullet pierced Zack's helmet, but just grazed his head. His left leg was not so lucky, taking a direct hit. But he was left for dead, and after the Korean boy rescues him, Zack's only mission is to make it back to headquarters in one piece.

The boy is played by William Chun, and is quickly dubbed "Short Round" by the bearded, limping sergeant. It seems likely that Steven Spielberg borrowed the moniker for his sidekick in "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom."

Sgt. Zack is played by Gene Evans in one of his first film roles; he would go on to a long and healthy TV and movie career playing cops and tough guys.

I was astonished to learn that Evans was just 29 years old when he made this movie. His grizzled features and the world-weary slump of his shoulders bespeak a man decades older. But going to war ages a man, physically, mentally and in his soul. The scars he wears on the outside are just mild reflections of the ones inside.

Not that Zack doesn't have his external scars, too. When he first meets with a black medic named Thompson (James Edwards), the latter comments that he must have been injured in the mouth at some point. Zack nods and says he was hit by an "88" on D-Day. In his own inimical way, Zack indicates he had surgeries to repair his mug.

"Most of my back(side), I'm wearing on my face. When my face gets tired, I sit down."

The threesome meet up with a tattered platoon on their way to establish an O.P. -- observation post -- at a nearby Buddhist temple. One of the notable things about "Steel Helmet" is that the actors use real soldier lingo, and it's up to the audience to pick up on the meaning of various phrases.

The lieutenant (Steve Brodie) asks Zack to come along to help school his squad of greenhorns, but is refused. Zack makes no attempt to hide his contempt for the young officer, who lacks field experience. Zack himself is a "retread" -- a soldier who also served in WWII. Thompson is also a retread, as is the squad's bazooka man, a Japanese-American named Tanaka (Richard Loo).

After Zack and Tanaka bail out the group from a sniper attack, he agrees to see them as far as the temple in exchange for a box of cigars one of the men is toting.

In perhaps the film's most shocking scene, the soldier with the cigars discovers an American body, and is ordered by the lieutenant to search it. Zack, slurping his words around a rind of melon from a patch they'd stumbled upon, lazily discourages such an action. When the soldier does search the body, he's blown up by a booby trap. Zack shows absolutely no remorse for the death of the man, only asking if he had his pack on him when he died. When he learns the pack is still at camp, Zack brusquely rifles through it for his cigars.

Eventually they reach the temple, where a North Korean major is hiding out. After killing one of the men and trashing their radio, the enemy soldier is captured. Zack eagerly looks forward to marching the prisoner back to headquarters for interrogation, which he figures will earn him a furlough. But when Short Round is killed by a sniper and the major taunts him about his affection for the boy, Zack angrily shoots the unarmed prisoner, mortally wounding him.

At the center of Zack's ethos is maintaining composure under fire. When he was about to leave with his prisoner, the lieutenant asked to exchange helmets with Zack for his bullet-ridden one, figuring it will bring luck. The sergeant refuses, letting the "lou" know that he may be wearing stripes, but he hasn't earned them yet.

Of course, Zack himself loses his cool in the film's climactic firefight, dropping his weapon and hazily wandering around, muttering something about krauts. Here, at the height of battle, the "hero" of the movie suffers from a post-traumatic stress flashback.

It's not the sort of depiction you expect out of a war hero, but that's why "The Steel Helmet" stands apart from other war movies of its era. Like "Battleground," reviewed here a few months ago, this movie is more interested in seeing through a soldier's eyes than glorifying him.

3.5 stars