Off The Shelf Review: A Bridge Too Far (1977)

By CONNOR KEATING

Tiger Media Network

80 years ago today, on September 17, 1944, the Allies launched the largest airborne operation in history: Operation Market Garden. A daring plan to end the war by Christmas that ended up going south. So what better time than now to look at one of the grandest war films of all time that looks at this mission and what went wrong – “A Bridge Too Far (1977).”

After the liberation of Paris, the Germans were on the retreat, and with success after success the Allied leaders got a little too confident and believed the Germans had nothing more than old men and Hitler youth left in their army. So they decide to launch a daring plan to get over the Rhine River and into Germany by dropping paratroopers behind enemy lines to capture a series of bridges, and then send the armored units in to take advantage of the bridges. However, they quickly discover that the enemy is far tougher than they believed and one problem after another kept throwing a wrench in their plans. Were the Allies able to take the final bridge in Arnhem and cross the Rhine? The answer is no… they didn’t.

So because this is a historical war movie, the plot is pretty much set in stone. However the story of Operation Market Garden is so interesting that it works well for a movie, and the film does a fantastic job of not only retelling the story, but showing us every aspect of the mission. The film has a ton of different perspectives that it jumps between. We see the British 1st Airborne troops both in and outside of Arnhem, the American 82nd as well as the 101st trying to capture their assigned bridges. We see the tank columns working their way through the deadly roads of the Netherlands, there are the Polish who can see right from the get-go that the plan is doomed, and we see what’s going on with the Germans from time to time as they try to figure out what’s going on, and we even get to see the Dutch underground as they try to get information on the Germans to the allies. 

Seeing all of these different stories from all over the battlefield really helps to sell the scale of the operation. This isn’t just one little battle, there are tons of different pieces that all have to work together in order to get the job done, and unfortunately they don’t get the job done in the end.

The characters here are all great. Many of them are based on real people and the film does a great job of presenting the, at first, gungho-ness of all the characters that soon turns to desperation as the fighting goes on longer than expected. Many of the characters also have some fun defining characteristics or story moments, many of which happened in real life. One of the British soldiers is always carrying around an umbrella, there’s a great scene where one of the American soldiers threatens a doctor at gunpoint to operate on a man, and then there’s Colonel Robert Stout, the most American American who ever American’d with his gruff, loud voice and big cigar, he’s probably my favorite character, even if his role in the film is rather small. 

The film features a massive cast with tons of recognizable faces. There’s the dad from “Elf”, the dad from “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade”, the old guy from “Jaws The Revenge”, Hannibal Lecter, and the film is directed by John Hammond?! From “Jurassic Park”?! All jokes aside, they all bring their A-game to this and do a great job.

The one problem that I have with the film is the fact that they might have gone a plot point too far. (Laugh track here) This is a pretty long movie at a whopping three hours and there are numerous times where it feels like you’re at the end of the movie… and then it keeps going! The fact that there’s also so many plots going on all at once can sometimes make the film a little confusing. This is my second time watching the film, (also I know a bit more about Market Garden this time) so I was able to follow the story fine enough, but for your average first time watcher that doesn’t know the difference between the M3 Lee, the M3 Stuart, and the M3 halftrack, a lot of what’s going on might be lost and you may end up confusing the two American airborne divisions, I’m pretty sure I did first time around. All of this isn’t necessarily that big of an issue, but it’s something worth noting.

Back to the positives, they just don’t make movies like this anymore. One of the most impressive things about the film is just how authentic it is. They filmed the movie on location, used real tanks, halftracks, and planes, and even did their own large scale parachute jump scene, and you have to remember, this is 1977 there is no CGI and as far as I can tell, not even any miniature work. Everything you see is real and it’s very impressive. The parachute jump is definitely a highlight, but all of the action scenes are just as impressive with all of their explosiveness and brutality, which really shows how deadly of an operation this was. Many war films can be quite slow and drab, and while “A Bridge Too Far” does have its slower moments, it also manages to fit a ton of action packed scenes all throughout.

While “A Bridge Too Far” is a pretty long movie that can be a bit confusing at times without an understanding of WWII, it tells a grand and spectacular story and manages to cover just about all aspects of it with a stellar cast and some impressive action sequences. This helps to make this a pretty great war movie. I give this film eight “supply drops filled with paratrooper berets” out of ten!

Connor Keating is a senior at Fort Hays State University, studying Natural Resources. Connor is an old-school movie fan, particularly Japanese monster movies, and is an avid DVD collector.