A worthy telling.

Rating: Null/10 (14 January 2004)

Far from being "an hour too long", a Bridge too far is one of those epic war movies that make the effort to get things right as well as having something new to say about war. Goldman's script is just superb considering he is dealing with real events and the fact that he manages to stay within these confines and still say a lot about war is a testiment to brilliant writing. Richard Attenborough's directing is spot on and the performances are good to a point. Ryan O'Neill is badly cast as is James Cann and Elliott Gould but Anthony Hopkins, Sean Connery and Dirk Bogarde are superb. Some of the more memorable scenes from the film are the stopping of the first German attack across the bridge (which was actually a recce returning to base) and the opening artillery barrage for the tank attack which is masterfully cut. As with any epic there are flaws but overall attenborough did a super job. Rating 7 out of 10.