Review – The Bridge on the River Kwai

For a war movie, this is an exceptionally morally ambiguous production. On the one hand we have an English officer (Alec Guiness) who seems like a decent, upstanding sort of guy. Yet he gets so deeply into cooperating with his Japanese captors that he actually ends up improving their chances of building a bridge that will carry troops and munitions to the front lines of the fight against the British. On the other hand we have William Holden as an American POW with distinct similarities to the character he played in Stalag 17. So who’s the hero, the noble traitor trying to build the bridge or the selfish commando trying to blow it up? The end helps resolve matters somewhat, but it’s still a strange journey getting there. It’s also a trip that could have been a bit shorter; the picture includes a lot of long, drawn-out sequences that don’t really contribute all that much to the plot. Overall, however, it’s an interesting relic from a time when war was more vague. Mildly amusing