an excellent movie that could have been more

Rating: Null/10 (2 May 2002)

I've read a lot of the reviews for this movie, and most merely discuss the film's accuracy, or the reviewer's own personal opinion of the real life characters portrayed in the film. Because this film focuses so much on accurately portraying Operation Market Garden, you lose the feel of suspense that one gets from most war films. The film makes up for it with beautiful cinematography, and amazing score, and . Unfortunately, the editing could not save the film's fairly disjointed plot outline. This movie skips around a lot, so you have to pay close attention to the setting of each scene. Some scenes which should have been important were hurredly placed into the movie, or so it would seem, and lose a lot of their effect. They also stick out like a sore thumb towards the end of the movie, where Attenborough seems to try to tie up countless loose ends in a half hour. For some, the ending may be unsatisfying, but I after a second viewing I realized how much I liked it. There are a lot of characters to keep track of as well. Luckily, with the all-star cast of "A Bridge Too Far," it's fairly easy to remember which lead is which. All of their performances are excellent, with the exception of a rather overdrawn Ryan O'Neale. If you can sit through another war movie, I would put this one at the top of your list to see.