A Film Too Long

It's time to check out another film dubbed by many a classic, 1977's A Bridge Too Far. This story is an account of World War II's Operation Market Garden, a failed attempt on the part of the Allies to drop paratroopers behind enemy lines, secure key strategic bridges on a path into Germany, and win the war by Christmas of 1944.

If you were an actor in the 1970s and you weren't in this film, then you either didn't want to be, or had the worst agent in the world. The cast includes James Caan, Michael Caine, Sean Connery, Elliott Gould, Anthony Hopkins, Gene Hackman, Ryan O'Neal, Laurence Olivier, Robert Redford, and Maximilian Schell. Some, like Connery and Redford, are really just there to add the special brand of swagger for which they were (and are) best known, but a few deliver some surprising performances. Gene Hackman serves up an entertaining turn (though with a perhaps not-quite-credible Polish accent) as an officer who warns of the impending disaster, and James Caan is the best performer in the movie as a soldier who goes to extreme measures to save another man's life.

Though praised by some today, the film was largely ignored in its time. My theory is that this is because the subject matter could actually be considered controversial. First of all, it focuses even more on British soldiers than American soldiers, playing against the patriotic grain so often associated with older war movies. Worse, it shows those soldiers overreaching, behaving stupidly, and more or less getting their asses kicked. This goes a step farther than merely dramatizing "the horrors of war," as other films have done. This was admitting to an unfortunate chapter in WWII history, and demonstrating that it could easily have been avoided in a number of ways.

While I found this perspective to be a refreshingly different take on a war movie, and one that did hold my interest for a while, the film was just ponderously long. It comes in about 5 minutes shy of three hours. The first hour is rather engaging, the characters sometimes intriguing, and the promise of action does ratchet up the tension. Amazing cinematography of recreated paratrooper drops dazzle the senses.

But then the battles of hour two all begin to drag. And then there's an hour three! What started with promise ends in boredom. Moreover, it just made me want to revisit the extraordinary mini-series Band of Brothers, which I believe also dramatized Operation Market Garden in a tight, excellent 60 minutes.

If you're the sort of film enthusiast who is wowed by stunning visuals, A Bridge Too Far might be one for you to check out. For myself, though, I can only rate the movie a C-. I can't say I was "disappointed," as I wasn't expecting much, but I can't recommend it in any case.