Bridge on the River Kwai, The

Rating: ****/*****, or 9/10

Phenomenally gripping epic and classic war movie like only old-school master director David Lean could deliver. In a Japanese concentration camp, a group of British POWs under the command of stiff upperlip colonel Nicholson (Alec Guinness) is ordered to construct a bridge over a jungle river. Meanwhile, Allied Command has also learned of the bridge and has dispatched a team of men, led by Major Warden (Jack Hawkins) and Shears (William Holden), an escapee from the prison camp everyone considered dead, to destroy it. After a gruesome trek through the dense Indochinese jungle, the saboteurs arrive, but will Nicholson allow them to blow up the result of all his hard work? Solid plot and superb acting, particularly Guinness in his role as a colonel completely devoid of emotion, who sees the bridge as a symbol for English spirit during adversity, a triumph of British leadership over Japanese barbarity, but at his heart is simply suffering from obsessive compulsion over his command and racist attitude towards his Asian captors. The movie boasts impressive production design and most of it is real: if you ever want to see a train crashing down an exploding bridge for real, go and see this magnificent film, which was good for seven Academy Awards. Lean would later outdo himself with the brilliant Lawrence of Arabia (1962).

Starring: Alec Guinness, William Holden, Jack Hawkins

Directed by David Lean

USA: Columbia Pictures, 1957