The career-capping personal epic of hard-boiled director Samuel Fuller (Shock Corridor). From his pitiless crime dramas of the 1950s and ’60s on, Fuller
operated a camera that never blinked, never prettied, never judged. He brings that same circumspect tone to this World War II picture, even though much of it is drawn from his own experiences in the 1st Infantry Division. The story focuses on a band of soldiers, led by Lee Marvin’s weathered sergeant, as they try to survive from the shores of North Africa to the beaches at Normandy to the Falkenau Death Camp in Czechoslovkakia.
