Great Britain, USA, and Japan kiss and make up for WWII

Rating: 5/10 (1 January 2007)

Just seen this movie - enjoyed it. I give it a 5 of 10.
I think that this movie is great therapy for the nations involved in WWII to take a real candid look back in hindsight at themselves after the war ended (movie was produced in 1957 using lead actors from each of the three nations I mentioned). While there ARE brief scenes of the soldiers shooting and swinging knives at each other, I can't help but feel that I am watching a cartoon of the likes of Inspector Gadget, not in WWII. There are British commandos mistaking an American sailor (who their own air force rescued from his sunken ship) for the enemy. Then the British commandos enlist this American sailor to help guide them through the jungle to find and blow up a strategic bridge. The British commando is so excited at having the chance to "blow something up" that it is amusing. At the POW camp where the Japanese are forcing captured British soldiers to build the "bridge over the river Kwai" for a train supply route through Burma, the Japanese wannabe camp commander feels inept as a commander because the British commander in his camp gets more respect from his subordinates than he does from his own Japanese subordinates. When the captive British commander and the Japanese commander were negotiating over how many of his men must work and for how long, I chuckled when the Japanese commander shouted, "This is not a game of cricket, this is war!". Yeah, this movie was "war" alright, GI Joe style. The ending was totally ludicrous, just as the medic said, "This is madness!" While this movie has EXACTLY the same message as far more poignant graphic war films such as "Saving Private Ryan" and "Full Metal Jacket" do (WAR IS SENSELESS), "The Bridge Over the River Kwai" was more of a psychological, even amusing, examination of why men do what they do in a war.