MOVIE · 1957

The Bridge on the River Kwai

ActionAdventureDramaWar161 min

In a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp in Burma during World War II, British officers are ordered to build a railway bridge for their captors, turning a brutal assignment into a struggle over discipline, pride, and duty. Alec Guinness is Col. Nicholson, whose rigid sense of military honor begins to shape the project itself, while William Holden’s Shears is pulled into an Allied plan to destroy the bridge before it can aid the enemy. Directed by David Lean, the film moves between the camp’s tense chain of command and the approach of the men sent into the jungle to stop what’s being built.