A battle of minds and codes of honor, as well as an adventure flick

Rating: 8/10 (29 August 2016)

Bridge over the River Kwai (1957)
A superbly well crafted World War II movie about British POWs working on a bridge in the Thai jungle for their Japanese captors.
That may sound like a summary, but along those lines it's simply a really well made (and fictional) movie. What makes it rise above (much as "Lawrence of Arabia" by the same director does) is the psychology, and the aggrandizing pro-British agenda. It's all feel-good stuff (if you're not Japanese, at least). And smart, sharply filmed, and increasingly complicated.
There are some welcome contrasts quite intentionally worked out at the start, including a common one in these film—the different military culture of the British (in Asia still very much of the British Empire mindset) and the Americans (represented by William Holden). The Japanese are really only present in the form of the prison commander, who is a combination of cruel and pathetic. You eventually feel sympathy for the fellow in a way, as the Brits show an unlikely but well-hones superiority in engineering and in morality.
There is some true basis to the movie but there were so many liberties taken with the truth that there is no need to dig into that (except for some sense of what the war was really like in SE Asia before 1945). So you really can't watch it for a glimpse of prison life in a Japanese camp. Instead think of it as a larger tale of dignity and perseverance. Alec Guinness (as the leading British officer) is wonderful.
The eventual climax is filled with irony and difficulty (and tragedy), but I can't go into that and the meanings here. Let it be said that you need to stick it out if the three hours starts to seem long. It has both a resolution to the plot and to the ethical issues that turn up.
Powerful stuff. In the big picture this will seem "by the book," an epic that is excellent but takes few chances. But it's so well made you need to appreciate it for what it is.