Just One Quibble...

Rating: 9/10 (4 August 2007)

Great movie! The ending alone is one of the most gut wrenching and suspenseful sequences ever put on film. I have one quibble with the ending though. All hell is breaking loose with Guiness trying to stop the the demolition of the bridge. He wrestles with a Brit commando and actually yells to the Japanese for help! Great twist and so far so good. Very surprising and suspenseful, even after seeing the movie about 8-9 times. Anyway, at that point, an entire platoon of Japanese begin running over to where Guiness and the commando are. My quibble is that except for one lone soldier, the rest of the troops all just disappear! One moment there's a whole battalion of men rushing towards and shooting at William Holden who's desperately swimming across the river to help blow up the bridge, and after that one lone Japanese soldier rushes him, misses and falls into the water, that's it! No more Japanese soldiers anywhere! They just all magically disappear which gives Guiness more than enough time to stagger, faint and fall on the plunger, blowing up the bridge. How convenient! In fact, EVERYBODY disappears at the very end with the exception of the one British officer who says "Madness...Madness..." It just gets me every time I see the film. It's so perfectly crafted in every detail throughout, but the most important moment in the entire movie happens as the result of a poorly staged pratfall!