All you need is love.

Rating: Null/10 (14 July 2012)

The Real Billy Shears
Bridge on the River Kwai was written by a French author, Pierre Boulle.
In the movie William Holden plays Commander Shears, an American captured when his ship the USS Houston is sunk. He is a POW in a camp full of British sailors and Australians and does his best to avoid any really hard work by becoming a grave digger.
But then Alec Guinnes (Obi Wan Kenobi) shows up and is the senior officer, Lt Colonel Nicholson. He refuses to let any of the officers do manual labor, so Shears says that Nicholson is a maniac and makes an escape. Then Nicholson says that the Japanese camp commander is mad. When Shears reaches a British base in Ceylon it turns out that he is not an officer. He is just a sailor named Shears impersonating an officer in order to get better treatment. After he escaped he decided to continue playing an officer and was going to say that being lost in the jungle drove him mad.
But the British Force 316, commandos, wanted Shears to lead them back to the POW camp so they could blow up the bridge that the prisoners were building. They made Shears a simulated major. Ian Fleming was the head of a force of British Commandoes in France called Force 54, along with "Q" and "U" and Bertrand, and the real James Bond, who Fleming once met according to his biographer.
Shears, also called "Number One", gets to the bridge but not before telling the Professor he is as crazy as Nicholson. Nicholson tries to stop them from destroying the bridge. Lt Joyce kills a few Japanese soldiers and Nicholson fights with Lt Joyce. The Professor starts a mortar barrage, and Shears swims across the river to set off the explosives.
Just as Shears reaches Nicholson they recognize each other, and Nicholson realizes that he is himself mad. Shears is killed by rifle fire and the mortar kills Nicholson who falls on the detonator and the bridge is destroyed. The British doctor stands on the riverbank and says everyone is mad.
But earlier in the movie Shears is sitting on a Ceylon beach with a blonde nurse and a thermos of martinis. He complains jokingly about how the nurse gives him pills, powders, shots, thermometers and all he really needs is love. The nurse says "Yes that is true. All you really need is love!"