A Bridge Too Far

How do spoilers work with historical movies? Can we reasonably assume that everyone already knows how Market Garden turned out, or are we doing the Millennial thing where we are assuming people don't know where Arnhem is, let alone Antwerp, let alone Holland, let alone who participated in WWII? The Nazis were part of that one right? Anyway, this movie has everyone in it, just about everyone that was anyone in 1977 and, from all appearances all of Hollywood was tied up in the making of this film right down to A-list actors in minor roles. So you kind of know that the acting is there and top notch... and so is the direction. At least the direction is about as good as you can assume for something that attempts to tell a little too much of the story all at once. Don't get me wrong, it's a great movie, and when they use the word "Epic" they are talking about epic in scope, and for that scope it does a pretty awesome and very coherent job. My one issue is the scope, Market Garden was enormous, it was an enormous failure, it was an enormous catastrophy, it was an enormous event, it was an enormous air invasion and this movie attempts to tell all of it at once. The result is that it's spread a little thin Had they made the movie 6 hours long, they might have been able to pull it off flawlessly... but who is going to sit through that? But no one can really argue with the results. It's not as bad as it could be, and it is a lot better than a movie this epic in scope should be. They achieved something brilliant. My only wish was that, after the epic failure, they gave Montgomery's infamous "Operation Market Garden was 90% successful" the last words and left it there, left it as a mess with a general trying to save face.

Usually when you read the term "stellar" applied to a cast, it's more for marketing purposes to convince us that the cast is better than we might want to think - well not so, here. Connery, Caine, O'Neal, Olivier, Bogarde, Hackman, Hopkins, Caan, Schell & Liv Ullmann all chip into this true telling of "Operation Market Garden" - a co-ordinated attempt by the allies to use almost anything that will fly to parachute troops behind Nazi lines. Their purpose: to secure strategically important river crossings before the enemy have a chance to blow them to smithereens. Their missions are fraught with dangers - bad intelligence, bad weather as well as a tenacious and well established enemy. The planning and actions scenes give a clear dramatic indication of just how logistically complex and risky this whole procedure actually would have been; and as war films go it is much less gung-ho. It is, however, very long - and a bit more judicious editing would have helped keep it more taut.

**_Star-studded cinematic account of Operation Market Garden_** In September, 1944, the Allies unleash an ambitious operation to secure key bridges in the Netherlands, which would facilitate a quick advance into Germany and have the boys home by Christmas. Unfortunately, the Germans’ defensive capabilities and willpower are stronger than expected. “A Bridge Too Far” (1977) covers the largest airborne operation in history up to that point with a great cast and several memorable sequences involving actors like Anthony Hopkins, James Caan, Robert Redford, Gene Hackman, Sean Connery and so on. It’s a straight war film in the manner of “The Longest Day” that refuses to get artsy, like, say, “Apocalypse Now.” The flick effectively illustrates how plans can look great in the comfort of a war room but, in the field, Murphy’s Law often comes into play. Whilst the chief goal of seizing the Arnhem Bridge failed, there were several successes, such as the capture of Eindhoven and Nijmegen, and the creation of a 65-miles foothold in Holland for future offensives, not to mention tying-up thousands of German troops. The boys wouldn’t be home for Christmas; it would take another four long months of strategizing and fighting. Speaking of which, the similar “The Bridge at Remagen” from eight years prior covers the capture of the Ludendorff Bridge on the Rhine in west-central Germany in March, 1945. It runs 2 hours, 56 minutes, and was shot in England and the Netherlands. GRADE: B