A Bridge Too Far
It’s an oddity amongst WWII movies: a blindingly starry cast and an good sized budget, accumulated by means of director Richard Attenborough to “have fun” one of the tremendous army disasters of WWII. The turn facet to The Longest Day, A Bridge too a long way is the tale of how the Allies bet big on prevailing the war by Christmas, 1944, and sooner or later left hundreds killed, wounded or captured throughout the Netherlands.
starting as adventure, revved up with the aid of bally-ho Brits and spunky yanks (which includes Michael Caine, Elliott Gould and a effective Edward Fox), Attenborough’s film quickly devolves into a chain of glum anecdotes on the futility of battle. Anthony Hopkins’ glider troop are met behind enemy lines now not via the anticipated “antique guys and kids” but by using advanced German forces; Robert Redford’s paratroop corporation are decimated taking pictures a bridge with leaky boats; and Gene Hackman’s Polish widespread, dismissively treated by way of a self-happy Allied upper echelon, is pressured to observe as his army of unfastened Poles is massacred simply as predicted. all of the even as the German command in Holland, in a strand of black comedy, again and again insist the Allies have to have secret plans up their sleeve, due to the fact they couldn’t possibly be dumb or reckless sufficient to be trying what they appear like.