Movie #130: The Bridge on the River Kwai

Movie #: 130
Movie Title: The Bridge on the River Kwai
Year Released: 1957

Director: David Lean
Notable Cast: William Holden, Jack Hawkins, Alec Guinness, Sessue Hayakawa, James Donald, André Morell, Peter Williams, John Boxer, Percy Herbert, Harold Goodwin, Ann Sears, Geoffrey Horne

Short Description: After settling his differences with a Japanese PoW camp commander, a British colonel co-operates to oversee his men's construction of a railway bridge for their captors - while oblivious to a plan by the Allies to destroy it. (IMDB.com)


Rank on the Top 100 Lists (as of 1/7/2013)

AFI.com: #36
IMDB.com: N/A
Ranker.com: N/A
Lifed.com: N/A
Empire.com: N/A
FilmCrave.com: N/A
FlickChart.com: N/A



Date Watched: 4/30/2016

Grade: 2.5 out of 5 (Satisfactory)

Rationale: Two very long, very drawn out parts will forever tarnish my memory of this being an otherwise decent movie. First, the entire first hour is spent arriving at the Japanese POW camp and watching Alec Guinness’s Lieutenant Colonel Nicholson stubbornly refuse to work alongside his men to build a bridge for the Japanese, even though it would improve the conditions his men were enduring. Second, I didn’t time it but the group of soldiers that are sent by the British Army to destroy the bridge spend way too much time trekking through the jungle to get there. Seemed like a gross overemphasis and considerably slowed down the second half of the movie.