When you read a blog written by a sixteen-year old, you know there’s going to be some biased writing. For example, I have a particular grudge against war movies. To me, if you’ve seen one war movie, you’ve seen them all. Some films (From Here To Eternity, Mrs. Miniver) can mix things up and actually be entertaining, but others really don’t. Including this film.

So these guys are building a bridge. On the river. Kwai. Oh, and there’s supposedly a big escape plan but there’s also this plan to explode the bridge as soon as possible and there’s this one guy who’s taking control of the bridge and there’s yet another guy who escaped and.. who cares?

The acting is okay, the editing is okay, the art direction is okay, the makeup and sound editing stand out a tad, but the writing and directing are just dull. This film is simply dull. I sat through 2 1/2 hours of dull film and got a rather intense climax, but it didn’t really feel like I gained anything by watching this film. I can tell why people would enjoy a film like this, it is an epic story after all, but it did next to nothing for me.

My main motivation for starting the Best Picture Reviews was because, as much as I loved film, there were a million  classic films I still needed to see. And while I have seen a few great films that I probably wouldn’t have seen otherwise (Lost Weekend, You Can’t Take It With You) there are still quite a few time-wasting films like this I wish I hadn’t sat through. And there are a ton of non best picture winning films that sound pretty cool to me that I probably need to see at some point. Say, 12 Angry Men, which came out this exact same year this movie did. And when a film taking place in one room sounds better than a supposed epic, you may need to straight out your priorities.

**1/2

(Update: I recently saw 12 Angry Men, which in my opinion is a much better film than this. It’s a must see, but I don’t want to say anything else because I’m not reviewing that movie.”