Good War Movie Gets Better

Published on January 23, 2005 By evilPidge In Movie Reviews

Back in 1994, during my first tour in Korea, a bunch of us heard of this movie that was causing a buzz back in the states. All the GI's coming from the states were telling us how great this moive "Pulp Fiction" was. We were really excited to see this movie, but at the time, it could take anywhere from 4 months to 50 years for a movie to get from the states to the military bases in Korea. We were pretty bummed by this until one of the guys found out that Pulp Fiction was playing at one of the local Korean movie theaters. We all rushed down to the theater and watched the movie, and we all agreed that the movie was pretty good! It was sorta odd with its disjointed story line, but we all agreed it was pretty kick ass. A few months later, it came to the post movie theater and we all went to see it again. We were floored! We had heard about how the Korean cencers were strict, but those guys took out half of the movie! One of the things that stuck me was that the movie was good, even without all of the stuff that had been cut out. Imagine what the movie would have been like without Mia overdosing on heroin, without the gimp, without the death and disposal of Marvin, without the death of Vincent Vega? And believe it or not, it was still a good movie without those, and other scenes that didn't make it to the Korean theaters.

The other day I was coming home on the bus from the University, and as my habit, I was reading the University newspaper and read this article . Now The Big Red One was one of my favorite war movies while I was growing up, so I jumped at the chance to go see this movie. I was floored!

As the article said (as if anyone bothered to read it), the original movie didn't get very good reviews, and one of the reasons was because of poor character development. Well no shit, its tough to have character development when all of teh scenes that develop character end up on the cutting room floor!

Another thing that floored me, was the fact that there was a nemesis in the movie. It may be that just that it's been a long time since I've seen the movie, and I was a bit younger then, but while I remember this German sergeant, Schroeder (although I don'l think they ever used his name in the original movie) I didn't realize it was him in later scenes (the failed ambush at the crucifix, and the German that surrenders at the end of the film). Not only was he in these scenes, but in the directors cut he was in Scicly, and Belgum, and Paris. One of the things that struck me about this character, is that while you can look at as the "evil" german (he kills one of his own men for refusing to fight in the first scene we see him in) he is a mirror image of Lee Marvin's character "The Sergeant." Both are dedicated to their cause, both are willing to shoot cowards, or deserters. The only difference between the two, is one is German, and one is American. I think this is a very profound part of the movie, that was lost in the original cut.

Many of the newly added scenes do nothing more than to make original scenes more clear. For example. In the original, Zab states that his mother sold the movie rights to his book for $15,000. Nothing else is said of it. A few scenes later the squad is having a party, and when The Sergeant says its time to leave, Zab tells him its his party and he'll say when its time to leave. I guess if your paying attention close, you can put two and two together, but in the director's cut, we see Zab bring in some of the money from his book and state that hes going to throw a party for the whole squad. It doesn't really do much to bring the whole story along, but it makes later scenes clearer.

I really like The Big Read One the first time I saw it because it was one of the first movies I saw that depicted war as something other than glorious. If you have a chance to see the directors cut, I would encourage you to.

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