The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957)
Directed by David Lean
The classic story of English POWs in Burma forced to build a bridge to aid the war effort of their Japanese captors. British and American intelligence officers conspire to blow up the structure, but Col. Nicholson, the commander who supervised the bridge's construction, has acquired a sense of pride in his creation and tries to foil their plans.
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What critics compared The Bridge on the River Kwai to
As in episodes one through three of the “Star Wars” franchise, Reeves is operating in revisionist-prequel mode, filling in the calamitous backstory that leads to a depressing present reality — except that in this case, he’s less concerned with mythology, approaching this chapter as an elaborate homage to such manly classics as “The Great Escape,” “The Bridge on the River Kwai” and “Apocalypse Now,” starring monkeys.
The movie is also profoundly indebted to the cinema of David Lean, specifically The Bridge on the River Kwai, as the apes are gathered into work camps to build a massive wall at the insistence of their human captors.
The movie branches off onto an unexpected route, taking inspiration not only from the other Planet of the Apes films but from classic war pictures like The Great Escape and The Bridge on the River Kwai .
Most of the spoken dialogue, by contrast, falls to Harrelson’s Colonel, a worthy new adversary who at one point gets a deranged, nihilistic monologue that further underscores his resemblance to Col. Kurtz in “Apocalypse Now.” That’s just one of a few classics that Reeves has cited as overt influences, including the Clint Eastwood western “The Outlaw Josey Wales,” biblical epics like “The Ten Commandments,” and the World War II-era classics “The Great Escape” and “The Bridge on the River Kwai.”
Reeves and cinematographer Michael Seresin have combined to make a film in which every single moment—whether it is a quiet contemplation of Caesar and his surroundings or one of the massive action sequences—is striking to the eye and even contains sly visual homages to such classics as “The Bridge on the River Kwai” and “Apocalypse Now” for good measure.
It’s a movie packed with powerful set pieces—escapes, rescues, fights to the death—majestically shot by Michael Seresin and staged in a dazzling panoramic style that recalls the masterworks of director David Lean, especially The Bridge on the River Kwai, and more popcorn-oriented stuff like The Great Escape.
Instead, he's chosen a comfortable blend of "Dead Poets Society" and "The Bridge on the River Kwai", which casts him as an irresistibly charismatic court-martialled general, facing off against a blinkered, cruel system.
On the other hand, it works nicely as prison drama, avoiding most of the more obvious and cliched scenes of the genre, and cleverly weaving in elements of -- and paying tribute to -- such classics as Sidney Lumet's "The Hill" and David Lean's "The Bridge on the River Kwai."
Colonel Winter has building materials brought in so the prisoners can build a stone wall in the yard — the wall itself serves no purpose, but building it is something to do and it’s constructive (calling to mind The Bridge on the River Kwai).
The brazenly derivative screenplay credited to David Scarpa and Graham Yost recycles elements from Cool Hand Luke, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and even The Bridge on the River Kwai while spinning a briskly entertaining yarn about rebellion and redemption in a maximum-security military prison.
British obsessiveness in the face of reason can make for fascinating drama – consider David Lean's The Bridge on the River Kwai – and it simplifies the triumph, and personal ramifications, of Eddie's celebrated turn at Calgary.
Even many war-film masterpieces such as “The Bridge on the River Kwai” and “Saving Private Ryan” drag during many scenes, leaving only a few standout moments (such as the ending of the former and the opening of the latter) sticking in moviegoers’ memories.
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El convite de Darabont puede basarse en la novela corta Rita Hayworth y la Redención de Shawshank ( Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption ), del querido King, publicada en su recordada antología Las Cuatro Estaciones ( Different Seasons , 1982), un claro ejemplo de su humanismo descarnado y truculento más cercano al drama que al terror estándar, no obstante el director y guionista lee al asunto, en esencia un retrato seco de la mediocridad y el salvajismo de prisión que deriva en cansancio existencial, un proyecto de fuga y una lenta ejecución del plan de turno, como una especie de popurrí con aire de “grandes éxitos” de ingredientes tomados prestados de una retahíla interminable de películas semejantes de encierro, angustia y necesidad imperiosa de evasión, cúmulo que abarca desde clásicos yanquis como Fuerza Bruta ( Brute Force , 1947), de Jules Dassin, Infierno 17 ( Stalag 17 , 1953), de Billy Wilder, Revuelta en el Bloque 11 ( Riot in Cell Block 11 , 1954), de Don Siegel, La Celda Olvid…
What's more, the original movie featured a take-off on the "Colonel Bogey March" from "The Bridge on the River Kwai," and this time we hear the march from "The Great Escape."
“Hacksaw Ridge” is a war film of the old school, celebrating nobility, courage and self-sacrifice in the tradition of “ The Bridge on the River Kwai ,” “ Paths of Glory ” and “ Saving Private Ryan .”
Sounds predictable and academic, but what’s unexpected is how deftly Stiller manages to explore these issues and allude to war films from The Bridge on the River Kwai to Platoon to Rambo while still recognizing the value of a well-placed fart joke.
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The consensus great war movies and TV shows of the modern era come from wars we could see back home like World War II (“Saving Private Ryan,” “The Bridge on the River Kwai,” “The Thin Red Line”), Korea (“M*A*S*H*”) and Vietnam (“Apocalypse Now,” “Full Metal Jacket”).