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 ...

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 indi...