The Bridge on the River Kwai

About as Oscar-worthy as any film made in the '50s is David Lean's gripping BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI. Based loosely on a real-life incident, it tells the story of an imprisoned British officer (Alec Guinness) who loses sight of his mission when forced to build a bridge for the Japanese that will enable the enemy to carry supplies by train through the jungle during World War II. Guinness plays the crisp British officer to perfection, brilliant in all of his scenes but especially in his confrontations with Sessue Hayakawa. William Holden has a pivotal role as one of the prisoners who escapes and enjoys his freedom for awhile before being asked to return with a small squadron to destroy the bridge. Jack Hawkins and Geoffrey Horne have colorful roles too and all are superb under David Lean's direction. The jungle settings filmed in Ceylon add the necessary realism to the project and there is never a suspension of interest although the story runs well over two-and-a-half hours. The film builds to a tense and magnificent climax with an ending that seems to be deliberately ambiguous and thought provoking. Well worth watching, especially if shown in the restored letterbox version now being shown on TCM. Some of the best lines go to William Holden and he makes the most of a complex role--a mixture of cynicism and heroism in a character that ranks with his best anti-hero roles in films of the '50s. He brings as much conviction to his role as Alec Guinness does and deserved a Best Actor nomination that he did not get.

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source: The Bridge on the River Kwai

The Bridge on the River Kwai

My uncle lived through the Bataan march, and was a POW in a Japanese labor camp. According to his daughter the one comment he made about this movie was as follows; "*Explicative*, we never had it that good!" He then reportedly stormed out of the TV room. You know, I have to say that I saw this film a couple times as a kid, and I never thought much of it. Initially I was going to title my review "Egomania 3" because that's kind of what we have here. The "drama" between the leads is manufactured in the extreme. The squaring off between Guiness and Mifune puts a grim smirk (if you could call it that) on this viewer's face. The film just doesn't ring true as to what happened to American, British, Australian, New Zealander and even French or Dutch POWs taken by the Japanese. The Imperial Japanese military didn't have the wanton industrial slaughter mechanism of the Nazi regime in Europe, but instead had the "work them until they're dead" ethic derived partially from Bushido, the code of the samurai. The acting was over the top. The story was so detached from reality as to be insulting, and by that I don't just mean my family's anecdote, but the interviews with survivors who went through that atrocity tell a very different and tragic story. During the Bataan march itself Japanese soldiers routinely shot anyone who looked weak or didn't look like they could make it, or rested. Then, once they got to the camps, it was hell baking in corrugated iron huts, laboring in hot and disease infested regions. And that's just for starters; the treatment, the food, the sheer and utter abuse; NONE of that is in this film. This film is about Hollywood parading its stars for what some idiot asinine producer thought would be a good patriotic film showing Americans and British being defiant in the face of the odds. Wrong. Look, I love Japanese culture. I love the food, I love the movies, I love the clean and polite society, and the people themselves, and I certainly don't hold any grudges whatsoever. In fact I want to retire there. And, I'm not the only one. Therefore, why not make a movie that shows the REAL EXPERIENCE? I can't answer that, but what I do know is that this piece of cinematic trash is just another notch in a southern Californian metroplex film industry that seems to never get anything right when it comes to history. What's even more insulting is that people have voted it so high as a quality film. Between the Russians not getting credit for their massive effort in what they call "the Great Patriotic War" and people like my family who were there when it happened, it's a wonder the entire film industry hasn't been run out of town and forced to setup shop in Mexico. Respectably shot, egotistical acting, poor SFX (notably the miniature), and a script that is just so idiotic I can't believe anyone green-lit this thing, it's a film that's definitely got some massive flaws. If you need to see a WW2 film about the Pacific Theatre, then check out Tora Tora Tora (Tiger Tiger Tiger). See this movie once, then do your brain a favor and pick up a book on the subject to learn what REALLY happened.

SPOILER: This film is long (161 minutes), is almost 40 years old, and yet still is terrific, still holds up and will forever, I suspect, be considered one of the greatest war movies ever made. 'Kwai' is particularly amazing in that there is very little action in it, yet it consistently entertains - during the actual movie and no matter when you see it. It entertained me when I saw in the theater as a 12- year-old as years later as a 50-something-year-old seeing it on DVD. I say this to encourage younger people to check this film out, and give it a chance. Anyone who is fascinated with character studies might find this particularly interesting with Alec Guiness' role in here as Colonel Nicholson. He was mesmerizing in his role. William Holden, Sessue Hayakawan, Jack Hawkins and the rest of the cast are all excellent, with the four mentioned above perhaps playing the roles of their lives. The gorgeous countryside of Ceylon is photographed beautifully. David Lean, one of the all-time great directors, did this film, too, so it certainly has good credentials. A winner of seven Oscars, this great movie has stood the test of time.

Without belittling `Kwai,' it does seem, looking backwards at David Lean's career, to be a dress rehearsal for the more operatic, tightly controlled (and better written) `Lawrence of Arabia.' Alec Guiness's passionate, detailed performance as Colonel Nicholson, above all other factors, makes Kwai a still watchable and important experience. The screenplay, however, divides unevenly between those who must build the Bridge and those who must destroy it. Ebert, in his Great Movies article, correctly identifies William Holden's character in Kwai as undergoing an implausible transition from escaped POW to martini-guzzling playboy to selfless war hero. Verbatim: `Holden's character, up until the time their guerrilla mission begins, seems fabricated; he's unconvincing playing a shirker, and his heroism at the end seems more plausible.' That, I believe, is also Kwai's greatest weakness. Holden's relationship with Jack Hawkins (playing a parallel role to his General Allenby in Lawrence) seems pallid next to the mighty Guiness/Hayakawa standoff – in fact, it seems to be in another movie altogether. Also, Malcolm Arnold's score, which I loved when I was a kid, seems now jarringly inappropriate from start to finish. I am too much influenced, I suppose, by the rock and roll jungle menace of Coppola's `Apocalypse Now.' Lastly, it is many decades past 1957. Images of whistling soldiers, marching proudly after months of captivity, then putting on an `entertainment' more expected in the world of Rodgers and Hammerstein, may ring very false to today's viewer. But keep your eyes fastened tight to Alec Guiness. Kwai is the Everest of his career, and very few actors climb that high.

Watch the REAL story of the Bridge on the River Kwai (it airs frequently on the History Channel) and listen to the accounts of the men who survived. THEN watch this piece of fiction before you comment on how it portrays the blah blah of war, and the madness of blah blah. BOTRK is fiction, nothing more. The fact that people have praised the film for its realism and frank depiction of war is a great dishonor to the people who were beaten, starved, tortured and even eaten in Japanese prison camps. Try to imagine, if you will, a film about Auschwitz where the concentration camp prisoners are all well fed, not a single walking skeleton in sight, as they whistle while they work. No mention of ovens, gas chambers or horrible 'medical' experiments. Pretty offensive, isn't it? Now try to imagine having lived through an ordeal such as that, and knowing that IMBD users have voted that film into the top 250. Anybody who feels they owe any debt of gratitude to the old men who gave their lives and minds for our freedom, please vote '1' for this film. Get it into the *other* top 150, right up there with Santa With Muscles and Manos, the Hands of Fate.

Rightly BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI is considered a classic of cinema , it`s well made , well directed and most of all well acted by the cast , but this doesn`t stop a major problem with the script from nearly wrecking the whole film and it`s this : The imperial Japanese committed the worst crimes against humanity in the whole 20th century . Of course they weren`t alone Hitler , Stalin , Mao , Pol Pot et al murdered millions upon millions of innocents and for that their can be no excuse , they have the blood of countless people on their hands , but these unreasonable murders were committed for the reason of utopian idealogy . Imperial Japanese barbarity had little if any idealogy behind it . Defeated armies and civilian prisoners were treated as cowardly " Untermenschen " to be treated with the utmost inhuman contempt and without mercy . As many as ten million Chinese died at the hands of the Japanese and millions of more Asians died across Asia during the Nipponese occupation . And it`s this rewriting of history in order to bring about a dramatic story that comes close to destroying the film . Nicholson stands up to his captors and refuses to be broken by them . Very dramatic ( Helped no end by Sir Alec`s performance . Perhaps the greatest actor of all time ) but in reality Nicholson would have been tied to a stake and left to starve to death . In fact Nicholson wouldn`t have had to show any defiance it was very common for Japanese guards to use prisoners for live bayonet practice just for the sheer hell of it . I take it because it was made during the cold war that Hollywood tried to rehabilitate both Germany and Japan by showing them in a less cruel light , but whatever the reason it is rather annoying to see prisoners holding concert parties in a Japanese POW camp . So treat this film as a drama not as a history lesson . For the record the real bridge was bombed by the American airforce

I have a deep admiration for David Lean as the director who pushed the boundaries of film making far beyond, and set the marker not only in technical aspects of the craft, but often in atmosphere and feel of the film. His movies are beautiful to watch and that's why sometimes we can't see how bad the cake tastes from all the icing and decorations. "The Bridge on the River Kwai" is like that, sticky sweet but ultimately nauseating. Every time a movie parts from reality we observe a genre, and the intention of film maker, along with symbolism it's trying to project. War movies in particular have to be true to the bone (unless they're parodies) because they represent the bestiality of mankind, and duality of man. This film tried to portray those essential elements but fell into Hollywood blender and came out silly and unrealistic. First and foremost, anybody who even remotely knows anything about Japanese tradition, military culture social and military codes and character of Japanese man, can only laugh at pitiful Colonel Saito who is not only without any remorselessness, but looks like a powerless teacher on the first day in a new school, being played like a flute by honorable Colonel Nicholson (Alec Guinness),who not only survives days, locked in a tin box in tropical heat and humidity, but wins every concession for his troops he can think of, making the poor Colonel Saito cry at the end of one of his parades of will?!? Japanese soldiers and camp commanders were "very well known" for their compassion, sensitivity and sensibility which was expressed many times during the war, especially in Wake Island massacre, Manila massacre and Bataan Death March, so even the hint of Colonel Nicholson's behavior would result in quick decapitation. William Holden with his tanned biceps glowing in the sun is a true picture of starved Japanese prisoner, and his escape, along with return through the jungle in 50's style loafers (observe the scene where he and his band of sturdy man are being washed by Burmese women prior to attacking the bridge), is down right preposterous. Building a bridge as a monument to his ego is possible way of expression for "open only in a case of war" type of character Col. Nicholson apparently is, but convincing other prisoners to join in that venture simply on "let's show 'em" premise, in those times and circumstances is not likely to happen. To complete the three-ring circus, Japanese soldiers show solidarity and play along, so at the end you're not sure what did you just see. The battle of wills, winner makes history film, anti-war film, or simply a Hollywood action movie/spectacle without any plausibility or logic? Judge for yourself. Oh, and 5 stars are only for cinematography and Holden's loafers.