One of the all-time top films

Rating: 10/10 (14 October 2006)

If this story were to be remade today, undoubtedly the characters would possess more diverse sides, and display more dimensions to their personas than this picture reveals. This is a "1950's film," and was made only a decade and a half after the events portrayed occurred, and only 10 years after Japan was just getting back to some semblance of normality after the consequences of World War II.
However, this IS one story which should never be remade, and which is all the better for "when" it was produced - in addition to the perfect casting, which could never be replicated.
The four leads were as perfect in their roles, individually and in combination, as one could wish. In addition to their acting talents, per se, their abilities to portray characters of proper relative age are equally notable. At true age of 47, Jack Hawkins' character is about the equivalent in the film. Holden, younger in the film, and Guinness older, were believable, although only two years apart (41 and 43 respectively) in actuality. Most amazing is Sessue Hayakawa - he was 68 - "pushing 70" - in 1957, yet one could imagine his character's being a contemporary of Guinness's - even maybe a year or two younger.
Guinness and Holden are among the all-time icons in cinema, and Hawkins almost the equivalent, especially to those familiar with his work in British cinema - but Hayakawa is certainly not remembered as vividly as he ought to be. This can be mostly attributed to the racial stereotyping during his period of work, from early in the 20th century through the period of this picture. But this was a truly gigantic figure for much of this period - and a star who received $200,000 for a film - IN 1919 - as he was turning 30, and several years before the first talking pictures.
"The Bridge on the River Kwai," has many dimensions - all powerful. It is one work for which the term "spectacular" is wholly-applicable, and not some press agent's creation. The juxtaposition of the Hayakawa and Guinness characters, and the interaction between these two is as compelling as anything ever presented on stage or screen.
The characters also ring true - not only in composite in portraying a depiction of World War II in general, and the Pacific Theater in particular - but also in characterizations of human beings in their roles which chance and destiny have placed them. It shows them not only in terms of the wartime circumstances which the world's events have brought upon them, but is also a metaphor of people functioning, persevering, adapting and bearing the consequences of their circumstances and the relationships these have spawned.