More Of A Psychological Study Than A War Movie

Rating: 6/10 (18 June 2011)

"The Bridge On The River Kwai" is not your typical war movies. There are no battle scenes and there's little carnage; hardly any of the action you're conditioned to expect from a "war" movie. Even for a movie set in a prison camp there are no mass escape attempts (the one escape attempt I believe consisted of three prisoners.) This is instead more of a psychological study of the effects of captivity on soldiers - maybe even an early hint of what's come to be known as "the Stockholm Syndrome" - as prisoners begin to identify with and in some ways sympathize with their captives.
The movie is set in a Japanese prison camp where the prisoners are ordered to work on building a massive railway bridge over the River Kwai. Alec Guinness put on a strong performance as Col. Nicholson - the senior British officer among the prisoners who fights for the respect of the camp commander Col. Saito (Sessue Hayakawa in another strong performance). The movie for a while offered a pretty good depiction of the harshness of Japanese prison camps, and was interesting in portraying Nicholson as ultimately besting Saito as he first gains the right (guaranteed by the Geneva Convention) for the officers not to be used as manual labourers and then gets the British officers in charge of building the bridge, thus ensuring that his men would be essentially under British command. That was well portrayed, as was the fact that somewhere along the way the lines of loyalty got tested. Nicholson devotes himself to building the bridge, making an even better bridge for the Japanese than the Japanese themselves were going to build - all in the name of keeping up the morale of the British troops and building a monument to the abilities of the British army. But - as was questioned in the movie - at what point does the legitimate duty of POWs (the Geneva Convention allows for enlisted prisoners to be used by their captors for manual labour) become treasonous? The bridge and railway will be used to transport Japanese troops. Did Nicholson have to ensure that it would be so well built? And Saito suffers some of the same psychological challenges, depicted as being in torment after realizing that, while he's going to get his bridge built, he had to do it by giving up control to those who were supposed to be his prisoners. It all builds up to a powerful last scene as Allied commandos try to blow up the bridge and Nicholson tries to save it before realizing what he's doing.
The psychological study is interesting and the acting is good. I thought the movie itself was a bit too long at almost three hours. William Holden's role as an American officer who escapes from the camp and then becomes part of the commando team seeking to destroy the bridge was well played but struck me as rather unnecessary - at least I wasn't sure of the need for him to have been in the camp with Nicholson and then to have him return to blow up the bridge. Some of that seemed to me to add unnecessary filler to the movie, especially the scenes in which Shears is recruited to go back to the jungle as part of the commando team.
It's a good movie and interesting enough - just a little too much extraneous material and therefore a little bit too long. (6/10)