Sprawling and shapeless

Rating: Null/10 (18 April 1999)

"A Bridge Too Far" is a sprawling, shapeless epic with Ryan O' Neal looking desperately out of place as a General. O' Neal, then in his late 30s but looking 10 years younger, plays the same person inhabited by then 51 or 52 year-old Robert Ryan in 1962's "The Longest Day." The perpetually boyish O' Neal looks like he would be perfectly cast as Jimmy Olson in a Superman movie, not as a WWII General. The film as a whole is a wearisome affair, just as the majority of critics claimed when it opened in June 1977, the summer of "Star Wars." Perhaps "Star Wars" would have been a better title for this film since it is, in the tradition of "The Longest Day," stuffed with the species.
But few of these "stars" have enough screen time to distinguish themselves. Chomping on a big fat cigar, Elliott Gould is a mere caricature of dozens of other dogfaces in dozens of other WWII movies. As already noted, Ryan O' Neal, who probably has the most screen time of the American actors, is miscast, much too boyish to be believable as a General. Robert Redford, perhaps the biggest marquee name at the time of the film's release, gets the star treatment, being introduced (in the last 45 minutes or so) with a closeup that seems to cry out, "Hey kids, look who's here!" Redford is there all right, but I found myself wishing that Richard Attenborough were not. The actor turned director who, five years later, would lead "Gandhi" to an eight Oscar sweep, is out of his element in such a huge production. The intimacy of 1993's superb "Shadowlands" is more his style. "A Bridge Too Far" never gains momentum, and John Addison's wimpy music score doesn't help at all.