A Movie Too Many Actors and Clichés--Sadly Not One of Attenborough's Better Efforts

Rating: 4/10 (6 June 2016)

Quentin Tarantino once said it's best for characters in an action film to avoid discussing "the plot" too much. In "A Bridge Too Far", the dialogue and settings are so campy and obvious, the experience lapses into too many cliché scenes. Also, there are more stars in this film than in the Milky Way Galaxy. As the film moves along, name and star actors keep popping up: Sean Connery, Gene Hackman, Eliot Gould, Anthony Hopkins, James Caan, and Ryan O'Neil are all either donning officer's uniforms or privates' gear, and I've named only about half of them!
The story is certainly one worth exploring in a film: the failed military plan Operation Market Garden which occurred during early Fall of 1944 in which allied troops attempted to infiltrate Holland and push over bridges of the Rhine to enter into Germany as a means of more quickly ending the Second World War. It's not the actual story which is the problem; it's the realization which has much to be desired. Nearly every scene is filled with silly cliché drivel which has been used in war films from circa 1950 to 1965. It has much of the same issues as its predecessor "The Longest Day", in which high command, officers, and troops are constantly spewing over-the-top and/or unrealistic statements about the purpose of the endeavor.
Even without having viewed this film before, I predicted who would play which character. The following are those on the allied side. Gene Hackman obviously would be one of the lone voices to object to the mission, and he was cast as Stanisław Franciszek Sosabowski, a Polish General aiding the allies. Hackman's accent doesn't sound Polish but like bad Scottish as he rails against the allied leadership concerning the attack! Michael Caine as Colonel Joe Vandeleur pops up in a few scenes, often running around in a jeep wearing an ascot tie and sporting binoculars. I wasn't exactly certain where he fit into the operation. Eliot Gould as Col. Robert Stout is also often in a jeep, swearing with a cigar in his lips. He seems like a throw-back to his character in the original M.A.S.H. film (not the television show) where he played Capt. "Trapper" John McIntyre, who also sported a cigar. Ryan O'Neil plays Brig. Gen. James Gavin whose character in the film is so ambiguous I didn't understand that he was in fact a general who did go on para-trooping missions with lower-ranking enlisted men. Ryan seemed far too young in the role of a bona fide general.
The German side is little better. Hardy Krüger and Maximilian Schell lead among the German officers, but their dialogue and characterization ring of the issues in "The Longest Day". In other words, the Germans are portrayed as rather incompetent nincompoops who are constantly at attention like toy soldiers. One of the more silly exchanges is when one of the German high-command learn of the Allies para-trooping, they are dismayed they would be landing 12 km (about 7 miles) from the bridges over the Rhine. Duh. They're not going to land right on top of enemy lines, and the bridges are guarded by German infantry, which is shown later in the film. At one point, they also intercept allied plans from a wrecked Alley plane, but the high command immediately tosses them away, claiming they were placed there by the Allies as a means to fool the Germans. In point of fact, such plans were always brought to special intelligence departments for analysis by experts. In a similar story recounted in "The Man Who Never Was", the Germans received a planting of bogus plans aboard a wrecked airplane with dead "pilot", and they are eventually given to the Germans for intelligence analysis. That film was made 20 years before "A Bridge Too Far" and was far more realistic.
The incredible dialogue is what really makes this film. Consider the following with James Caan: Private: You tell me, Eddie. You tell me I won't die. Caan: All right, you won't die. Private: No, no. Guarantee me. I want you to guarantee me I won't die. Caan: I guarantee you. Soldiers in combat don't really talk like this. Most of the time if not all the time, they avoided talking about death. Here is an example from the German side: General Ludwig: Forgive me, but there is a battle. And we are in the process of winning it. Dr. Jan Spaander: Winning and losing is not our concern - living and dying... is. Do people really talk like this in the midst of war? I don't think so.
This film experience is like looking for Hitchcock in a Hitchcock film: everywhere different name actors pop up and you find yourself wanting to find the next one which is shown on the poster with little boxes for all the movie stars! The problem is there are just way too many roles for name actors, and I was getting confused as to where I was or which character was doing which task. It would been far better to focus on fewer characters and develop them well instead of relying on every war cliché imaginable and hoping it sticks like spaghetti thrown against the wall. Sometimes it sticks, but more often it doesn't.