Madness (okay not original, but, I'm sticking with it)

Rating: 9/10 (14 January 2014)

Okay, my summary is aimed at some of the, quite frankly) ridiculous poor reviews of this movie and in particular the reasons given as to why they have rated this movie so poorly, some of them are quite simply, anti British, one idiot even has a go at it's historical inaccuracies, this by a reviewer from America which has produced more historically inaccurate WW2 films than I can shake a stick at. Oh and the reviewer who said it was the worst film they had ever seen (there is always one) they must have seen a grand total of two in their lifetime, this and Raging Bull and tbh, this is better than Raging Bull in my opinion, some will agree with my view others won't, that's life, but, few will agree with that particular reviewer that this is the worst film ever.
This is a marvellous movie that won it's Oscars justifiably, Alec Guinness is unsurpassable as Nicholson, William Holden is pretty darn good as Shears and Sessue Hayakawa is excellent, if at time illegible as Saito. Not enough credit is given to James Donald as Clipton, who is almost the only voice of sanity among the main protagonists and there is a fabulous supporting cast of British character actors to boot.
My only quibble, and David Lean's too, was the Producer and studio's insistence of having a love interest put in for Shear's character, it was unnecessary and I'm sure if there had been a way to edit it out for VHS/DVD release then Lean may well have done it as it is a pointless distraction. But, at the time a film without a female in it was practically unthinkable, thank god times have changed.
One of the finest War movies, heck no, movies ever made. David Lean rarely put a foot wrong in any of his movies (Ryan's Daughter possibly, but, still a great, but, not fantastic film)