David Lean’s antiheroic war epic (1957), about a band of British POWs forced to build a bridge in the wilds of Burma. For what it is, it ain’t bad, though it serves mainly as an illustration of the ancient quandary of revisionist moviemakers: if all you do is systematically invert cliches, you simply end up creating new ones. The cast, effectively, is drawn from warring schools of acting: Alec Guinness, William Holden, Sessue Hayakawa, and Jack Hawkins.

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