You follow a sergeant and his four closest enlisted men in the 1st Infantry Division (known as the Big Red One) from their first battle in Africa to the end of the war. I’ve only watched the longer, re-cut version, and I thought that one was weirdly cut and really cut down. I can’t imagine how confusing the original version is — since it’s about 50 min shorter. Samuel Fuller both wrote and directed this movie, he himself served in the 1st Infantry Division during WWII.

You jump from the deserts in Africa to the fighting in Sicily, and then suddenly you’re on the beaches at Normandy and a while later you’re in a mental institute followed by the Battle of the Bulge and it ends with the liberation of a concentration camp in Czechoslovakia.

Although some fighting scenes are good and they feel quite realistic the movie doesn’t really work since you never get to know the main cast. The film maker just touch the surface of their story and attitude, and I understand that it’s hard to cram in that many campaigns into one movie and still keep all the dialog and character development. I think this would have been better either as a mini-series à la Band of Brothers or if we only saw some and not all of their campaigns.