Fabulous War Film!

Rating: 9/10 (26 April 2009)

In the tradition of other documentary style war dramas e.g. "Tora! Tora! Tora!", "Battle of the Bulge" and "The Longest Day", to name a few, "A Bridge Too Far" documents an ill-conceived mission designed to end the war earlier that failed miserably. Operation Market Garden was designed by Field Marshal Montgomery and many warnings and messages from various allies in occupied Holland were ignored causing many casualties to the military and Dutch citizenry. Like all these films it has a star studded cast of Brits, Americans and Germans including Sean Connery, Michael Caine, Edward Fox, Dirk Bogarde, Anthony Hopkins, Gene Hackman, Ryan O'Neal, Elliott Gould, James Caan, Robert Redford, Hardy Kruger, Maxmillian Schell and Liv Ullman as well as many recognizable character actors. The film is loaded with many very memorable scenes and terrific acting. It is beautifully filmed by Geoffrey Unsworth with an intelligent script by William Goldman and Cornelius Ryan who wrote the book. The music score by John Addison is brilliant and the main theme has become a standard for military bands. I saw this when it came out in 1977 and was quite impressed. Since then I have seen it multiple times on TV and have bought the DVD and now the Blu-Ray version which is incredibly beautiful. This is one not to miss.