Matcollis This Movie Can Only Be Described With One Word.

Pluskylang Great Film overall

Kailansorac Clever, believable, and super fun to watch. It totally has replay value.

Sammy-Jo Cervantes There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

betty dalton Record breaking war movie, in sheer size of the production. Biggest production ever in movie history. "A Bridge Too Far" tells the true story about the invasion of Holland during WW II, which was bigger in size than D-day in France and which caused more casualties. Greatest cast of movie stars ever ensembled in any movie in the entire seventies, featuring an incredible number of 14 oscar winners: Sean Connery, Robert Redford, Gene Hackman, Michael Caine, Laurence Olivier, James Caan, Anthony Hopkins, Dirk Bogarde, Liv Ullman etc. Acting performances are excellent. How could it have been otherwise, with such an unique cast of movie stars from the seventies. Everybody who was famous at the time played in it. Steve McQueen was the only star that refused to take part, because he wanted a bigger paycheck. Since this huge war movie production was already crumbling under a huge financial burden, Steve McQueen's paycheck demands were rejected.This war movie became the biggest grossing box office hit in Europe, but it didnt do well in America. The film received generally positive reviews from critics, but the film was completely ignored at Oscar time for daring to expose the fatal inadequacies of the Allied campaign. Almost 3 hours long, this movie is a slowburner though, but enticing from beginning to end. Never bored me for a minute. On the contrary, even though I have seen this movie dozens of times I still get excited by it. But I am from the older generation, therefore speed is NOT a necessity for me to enjoy a movie. Young people however may find it a bit long drawn, because there arent Star Wars explosions every 10 minutes. There isnt a happy ending. Therefore lots of people WONT like the ending. The ending is true to life though, because everything is as has happened during World War II. War aint fun, but this movie is still very charming and even very funny at some other moments though. Glorious and suspenseful too. Director Richard Attenborough made a movie that is enjoyable for the entire family, but he also clearly stated that he didnt want to make a movie that glorified the war. The ending of "A Bridge Too Far" is a big downer. You wont feel cheery at the end at all. And that is the explicit intention of the director. War isnt supposed to be an uplifting or feel good experience. Ofcourse not. But movies wont sell if they dont have a hapyy ending. This movie finds a good balance between entertainment and true to life depressing devastation. I must confess that I regularly watch it only for the first 2 and a half hours which are very glorious and suspenseful and even funny. But I do skip the downer part at the last 30 minutes, because I have already seen it so many times and just as everybody else I dont like downers at the end of a movie...Endnote: there is an excellent additional bonus DVD which features hours of real life war footage from World War II including a short documentary about the making of this biggest war movie of all time. The production of this movie was truly insane. But so is war...

shelly-182 This movie had most of the makings for a decent war flick - but OH, for the film editing!!! Eeeegads!! The scene/shot sequence and tempo was horrific. God, what a mess! Really can't believe people think this is a good movie. The acting is really the only thing that keeps this movie from being a disaster!

Michael A. Martinez A Bridge Too Far falls under its own weight in many ways with a lot of distracting cameos and an overly bombastic score. Also, it stumbles right out of the gate with a completely historically inaccurate and oversimplified narration that certainly angered any veterans of the Eastern, Italian, or African Fronts by erroneously claiming that up until D-Day the Germans were winning the war. Much of the rest of the writing falters under banalities and clichés, with some real life historical figures such as British General Browning and German Field Marshall Model portrayed as utterly incompetent (winning The Battle of Arhhem only because of luck and British hubris rather than due to his own ability). As usual for most old-fashioned war movies, the Germans are portrayed as largely heartless and often doltish with the Americans heroic, the British pompous, and the Poles and Dutch as noble victims of their circumstances.However, the film has a lot going for it that World War II films up to that point hadn't done. The battle scenes manage to attain a level of chaos, brutality, and realism unmatched for another 20 years. In addition to showcasing a lot of fairly accurate equipment, the action is edited well with great sound design (aside from those squeaky "beep" ricochets) and pyrotechnics. The scene where XXX Corp. first encounters the German lines with its devastating artillery barrage and then stumbling into an ambush ranks among my favorite war scenes, accurately portraying the sheer wide-scale savagery and how quickly great plans can fall apart.As usual for "big" movies of the time, there really isn't a plot or character arcs because of just how many overlapping stories and vignettes there are. A few bigger stars like James Caan, Robert Redford, and Elliot Gould get only 2 scenes - one small one to introduce their character and one larger one in which they do something memorable to service the action, usually calling back to something their character said in their introduction as though each one had some vaguely ironic prescient ability. Some of the stunt-casting actually makes the film worse, such as Gene Hackman doing his best but completely failing to fool anyone into believing he's Polish.History buffs, such as myself, will get a big kick though out of the straightforwardness of the presentation of Operation Market Garden. It's interesting even to see the generals posit over maps and see their plans come to fruition inter-cut with the small stories of the regular people on the ground. The operation certainly deserved a big picture to tell its story and with impressively mounted spectacle in the age before CGI and visual effects. The larger screen you watch it on and the more interested in WW2 history you are, the more impressed you'll be.

classicalsteve Quentin Tarantino once said it's best for characters in an action film to avoid discussing "the plot" too much. In "A Bridge Too Far", the dialogue and settings are so campy and obvious, the experience lapses into too many cliché scenes. Also, there are more stars in this film than in the Milky Way Galaxy. As the film moves along, name and star actors keep popping up: Sean Connery, Gene Hackman, Eliot Gould, Anthony Hopkins, James Caan, and Ryan O'Neil are all either donning officer's uniforms or privates' gear, and I've named only about half of them!The story is certainly one worth exploring in a film: the failed military plan Operation Market Garden which occurred during early Fall of 1944 in which allied troops attempted to infiltrate Holland and push over bridges of the Rhine to enter into Germany as a means of more quickly ending the Second World War. It's not the actual story which is the problem; it's the realization which has much to be desired. Nearly every scene is filled with silly cliché drivel which has been used in war films from circa 1950 to 1965. It has much of the same issues as its predecessor "The Longest Day", in which high command, officers, and troops are constantly spewing over-the-top and/or unrealistic statements about the purpose of the endeavor.Even without having viewed this film before, I predicted who would play which character. The following are those on the allied side. Gene Hackman obviously would be one of the lone voices to object to the mission, and he was cast as Stanisław Franciszek Sosabowski, a Polish General aiding the allies. Hackman's accent doesn't sound Polish but like bad Scottish as he rails against the allied leadership concerning the attack! Michael Caine as Colonel Joe Vandeleur pops up in a few scenes, often running around in a jeep wearing an ascot tie and sporting binoculars. I wasn't exactly certain where he fit into the operation. Eliot Gould as Col. Robert Stout is also often in a jeep, swearing with a cigar in his lips. He seems like a throw-back to his character in the original M.A.S.H. film (not the television show) where he played Capt. "Trapper" John McIntyre, who also sported a cigar. Ryan O'Neil plays Brig. Gen. James Gavin whose character in the film is so ambiguous I didn't understand that he was in fact a general who did go on para-trooping missions with lower-ranking enlisted men. Ryan seemed far too young in the role of a bona fide general.The German side is little better. Hardy Krüger and Maximilian Schell lead among the German officers, but their dialogue and characterization ring of the issues in "The Longest Day". In other words, the Germans are portrayed as rather incompetent nincompoops who are constantly at attention like toy soldiers. One of the more silly exchanges is when one of the German high-command learn of the Allies para-trooping, they are dismayed they would be landing 12 km (about 7 miles) from the bridges over the Rhine. Duh. They're not going to land right on top of enemy lines, and the bridges are guarded by German infantry, which is shown later in the film. At one point, they also intercept allied plans from a wrecked Alley plane, but the high command immediately tosses them away, claiming they were placed there by the Allies as a means to fool the Germans. In point of fact, such plans were always brought to special intelligence departments for analysis by experts. In a similar story recounted in "The Man Who Never Was", the Germans received a planting of bogus plans aboard a wrecked airplane with dead "pilot", and they are eventually given to the Germans for intelligence analysis. That film was made 20 years before "A Bridge Too Far" and was far more realistic. The incredible dialogue is what really makes this film. Consider the following with James Caan: Private: You tell me, Eddie. You tell me I won't die. Caan: All right, you won't die. Private: No, no. Guarantee me. I want you to guarantee me I won't die. Caan: I guarantee you. Soldiers in combat don't really talk like this. Most of the time if not all the time, they avoided talking about death. Here is an example from the German side: General Ludwig: Forgive me, but there is a battle. And we are in the process of winning it. Dr. Jan Spaander: Winning and losing is not our concern - living and dying... is. Do people really talk like this in the midst of war? I don't think so. This film experience is like looking for Hitchcock in a Hitchcock film: everywhere different name actors pop up and you find yourself wanting to find the next one which is shown on the poster with little boxes for all the movie stars! The problem is there are just way too many roles for name actors, and I was getting confused as to where I was or which character was doing which task. It would been far better to focus on fewer characters and develop them well instead of relying on every war cliché imaginable and hoping it sticks like spaghetti thrown against the wall. Sometimes it sticks, but more often it doesn't.