"...I've always felt we've gone a bridge too far."

Rating: Null/10 (2 April 2011)

An incredible production with an all star cast riding the wave of films like "Midway", "Tora Tora Tora", and trying to recapture some of the glory of old war movies like "Tobruk" or "The Desert Fox", "A Bridge Too Far" tells of a lesser known effort during the allied advance against the Nazi forces during the second world war.
I'm guessing lots of other reviews have tapped on the history upon which this film is based, so I'll skip that. But it's important to understand the context in which this film was made. As others have mentioned on the bulletin board and in reviews, there seems to be a bit of an anti- war message going on here. I think that's fair, but I also think it's important to know that this film was not only trying to recapture the spirit of the old war films, but was in fact also following the anti- Vietnam war movement, both conflict and social upheaval regarding the US inheritance of what started as a French colonial struggle had ended a few years before. But the imagery, hype and reality of the Vietnam conflict was still fresh in American minds, as well as our allies.
So when the film makers set to produce an old fashioned World War 2 film, they kept the modern anti-war sensibilities in mind. Ergo we get a lot of exposition regarding the human struggle as the conflict, specifically Operation Market Garden, rages on. We're treated with various scenes that sometimes don't always move the plot and story forward, but are intended to add a human dimension. The subtext is that paranoid egos dictate the scale and nature of the conflict, and that only the truly mad engage in such operations.
Untrue of course, but it is art. If conflict on any scale were only initiated by the insane, then we wouldn't have bar fights or fights at sporting events, nor gang warfare in urban hubs. Warfare is an extension of those basic human traits, and as such groups of humans wage it against one another when resources (tangible and political) are denied them. That's the thing that's really missing in a lot of war films, or films about any kind of conflict. It's perhaps unfair of me to put such a comment onto a film like "A Bridge Too Far", because the film itself deals with a specific battle, and not geo-politics of the time. We understand the context of the war itself; its origins and reasons for its conflation, and so we don't get a background history telling us why the Allies are fighting the Nazis. We understand that, so we're presented with a table setup to show us the struggle, exterior and within.
Does the film achieve its goals? When I first saw years and years ago the one element that really hit me was the struggle of the British detachment at the bridge. What they do and how both history and film unfold for them is something that will touch the military heart.
As for the anti-war elements, they're there. Some are impressive, but seem very much out of place, where others seem appropriately functional within the story itself. Again, the real history of the war was that the Nazis were trying to hold onto mainland Europe, taken through military conquest with the hopes of building an European empire. The social format for the Nazi (short hand for National Socialist) regime based upon a doctrine of ethnic superiority, and in this way a sense of entitlement. Without that knowledge "A Bridge Too Far", today, seems like a boisterous war film with some anti-war sentiments. I'm sure that was the original intent.
But does it work? As a film it's entertaining. As a message on the horrors or war, or of human psychology as to the causes of death and destruction, I think it's a failure. As an examination of the plot elements that saw what went wrong with operation Market Garden, it's mildly successful. As large as the battle scenes and other scene requiring massive amounts of extras were, there were some other scene that could've used more extras, specifically Sean Connery's sequences. You never get the sense of the size of his forces. Ditto with some of the German sequences as well. The Nazi forces are essentially a nebulous enemy to be taken on. We know the scope and emotional-size of the allies, but not their opposition. So there we see a bit of a discrepancy in size portrayal.
All in all a decent watch. Give it a spin on the old DVD player.