A few moments of this movie really stand out.

Rating: Null/10 (10 June 2003)

"A Bridge Too Far" is one of the relatively few war "epics" which makes a genuine attempt to get the facts right. Criticism of the movie doesn't take into account how difficult it is to maintain the kind of dramatic tension you get in fiction when you are dealing with reality.
There are a few scenes in this movie which make it special to the war movie buff. The limitations of not having the right equipment will always be there when you are trying to depict the largest military conflict in history, but there are some really great moments. The Spitfire that flies low over a young Dutch boy on a bicycle and "waggles" its wings captures the hope that must have filled the people suffering under German occupation that liberation was coming. The rear echelon bumbling that sends the largest paratroop force in history into battle with radios that don't work really sums up so much about military history and the reasons why things go wrong in war.
The sound effects of a German anti-tank unit first withstanding a rolling barrage and then recovering to counterattack a long line of Allied tanks are the most realistic I have heard in a war movie.
The restaging of an apparently suicidal river crossing in rickety "collapsible" English boats captures the real heroism that was a part of the experience of so many men in that war, and the drama of the scene, while heightened by the presence of Robert Redford, does not depend on him being in the scene to make it riveting.
The depiction of British paratroops fighting for days to hold the "bridge too far" that gives the movie its name is amongst the most realistic depictions of warfare you will see. It might be difficult to believe when you see it, but the fighting at Arnhem has been recorded in minute detail and doing some research shows you the movie is spot on.
The attention to detail is fascinating in small ways. This is about the only movie in which you will see British troops using the "PIAT" - the Personal Infantry Anti Tank weapon that looks like something out of a Roadrunner cartoon - but it was real (and really hopeless when you compare it to the American bazooka and the German Panzerfaust).
The movie is not entirely accurate, and the fact that there is no happy ending makes it an unlikely story to be made into an epic, but the film immortalises the largest parachute drop in history, and war movie buffs have to be thankful that it was made, despite considerations of history and the antiwar sentiment that made it a failure at the box office.