One Serious Flaw

Rating: 8/10 (21 May 2002)

Rightly BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI is considered a classic of cinema , it`s well made , well directed and most of all well acted by the cast , but this doesn`t stop a major problem with the script from nearly wrecking the whole film and it`s this : The imperial Japanese committed the worst crimes against humanity in the whole 20th century . Of course they weren`t alone Hitler , Stalin , Mao , Pol Pot et al murdered millions upon millions of innocents and for that their can be no excuse , they have the blood of countless people on their hands , but these unreasonable murders were committed for the reason of utopian idealogy . Imperial Japanese barbarity had little if any idealogy behind it . Defeated armies and civilian prisoners were treated as cowardly " Untermenschen " to be treated with the utmost inhuman contempt and without mercy . As many as ten million Chinese died at the hands of the Japanese and millions of more Asians died across Asia during the Nipponese occupation . And it`s this rewriting of history in order to bring about a dramatic story that comes close to destroying the film . Nicholson stands up to his captors and refuses to be broken by them . Very dramatic ( Helped no end by Sir Alec`s performance . Perhaps the greatest actor of all time ) but in reality Nicholson would have been tied to a stake and left to starve to death . In fact Nicholson wouldn`t have had to show any defiance it was very common for Japanese guards to use prisoners for live bayonet practice just for the sheer hell of it . I take it because it was made during the cold war that Hollywood tried to rehabilitate both Germany and Japan by showing them in a less cruel light , but whatever the reason it is rather annoying to see prisoners holding concert parties in a Japanese POW camp . So treat this film as a drama not as a history lesson . For the record the real bridge was bombed by the American airforce