The Big Red One (1980)

The cast smartly underplays things, with Marvin being as charismatic as usual playing a man of few words. And Hamill, an actor given to over-the-top outbursts, reins it in here; this may be his best big-screen performance.

These places were where Fuller himself served during the war, and he imbues these stories with the same gritty detail he probably delivered telling them over a beer.

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Schickel's painstaking work elevates The Big Red One into the pantheon of the all-time great war films and gives it a fullness that the original only suggested.

Fuller went a step further, baring not only his soul but the wartime scars inflicted upon it. For all its merits, the 1980 version of the film denied audiences that connection. The new version both restores and reaffirms it.

Fuller wrote and directed The Big Red One with a reporter's respect for detail and a humanist's respect for the moments that shape lives.

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.

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