fantastic even thought it is a bit old

Rating: Null/10 (17 July 2009)

I enjoyed this film and intend on giving it a 9 out of 10 on IMDb. I considered an 8, but I thoroughly enjoyed watching the movie. I was not sure whether or not the bridge was destroyed or how it was going to go down. It was much more dramatic than I could have anticipated. It was a little campy, but Guiness held the ending by watching him realize how far his own ambitions had taken him. Guiness really held the movie together and I felt myself wanting to see him on screen. He really was fantastic and watching him at the end was perfect. I particularly liked seeing compose himself and remind himself that he is a gentleman in each meeting.
I now have a slight man crush on William Holden and not because he was particularly good, but he was really charismatic in a few moments. The guy that played Saito was fantastic though. He had some really solid moments on screen and one can see how Ken Watanabe used this performance for his General in Letters from Iwo Jima. The scenes between Saito and Guiness were all great.
So about the movie as a whole. I can see why it is so highly regarded and it really did feel epic, even on my small laptop, and I cannot even imagine watching this on the big screen. The jungle really did feel formidable and Lean did an excellent job of making it a character all of its own. The open shot did an excellent job of setting that up by combining the graves with thick jungle shots. It was an extremely memorable opening sequence for me. The movie even though it is terribly long never felt long to me and felt really well paced. When the Canadien and Holden start floating down the river the movie felt like an eternity, but in a good way because I really was not sure if that bridge was going to blow and how it would blow. To me it is really interesting that they made this war film without almost no one getting shot and very few on screens deaths. But we really have a great insight what war could do to these individuals and sense of duty that these individuals had. The loyalty of ever type is displayed here and it really is well done.
I have to say one more thing about the ending. I love how they actually blew that stuff up and ran a actual train off the tracks. That is so great. You just cannot see stuff like that anymore. Someone would just do some special effects in the studio and it might look real, but for some reason I loved watching that
So the reasons why it does not get a 10 is because of stupid reasons, but have to be taken into account. First of all I hated that stupid little love thing that they had going on with the local girls carrying their stuff through the woods. Completely unnecessary and just seemed silly. The Canadian was introduced later so they did have that much time to build him up but I felt as if by the end of the movie he was a weaker character. The last thing is probably the silliest, but I do not think the transfer I had was of the best quality so it seemed like some of the colors were blown out. Maybe it was just the quality of the film and the technology they had to colorize it back then, but it did not look the as good as I feel as it could have. It still felt huge and epic, but grainy at times.
I guess that is it. There are probably a few other things, but this is way too long.