Answer: Yes.

Rating: 8/10 (22 August 2000)

Michael Coy's comments are comprehensive and hard to augment, but I feel compelled to answer: Yes, it was worth it. _Longest Day_ closed glorying war, and in large part glossing over the carnage wrought on D-Day.

_A Bridge Too Far_ serves the important purpose of bringing Cornelius Ryan's continual focus on the human cost back into the frame. It has the single-director's focus that the earlier film lacked, and applies a new standard that reaches beyond movie-star to get more natural, more real performances.
All that remains is a completion to Ryan's "war trilogy" by filming _The Last Battle_, covering the brutalities and ambiguities of the conquest of Berlin. But with its moral ambiguities (I'm reminded of the Russian commander who urges nuns in a hospital to make themselves scarce, because 'the men following mine are not so disciplined') would be difficult to pass by the script doctors in this falsely moralistic age.