“The Bridge on the River Kwai” opens with British POWs being marched into a WWII Japanese detention camp where they are told they must build a bridge over—you guessed it—the River Kwai. The first act is all about contrasting the British against the Japanese as men of principle. When the British officers (led by Lieutenant Colonel Nicholson) refuse to perform manual labor (in accordance with the Geneva Convention), Japanese Colonel Saito punishes the officers by locking them in iron boxes. Meanwhile, American Navy-man Shears escapes the camp, is rescued by the locals, and makes it to safety.
In the second act, the film begins to shift when Saito eases up on Nicholson. Nicholson, played frustratingly well by Obi Wan.0 Alec Guinness, notices a lack of discipline and poor morale among his men. Thus, he decides that actually building a bridge, with all of their British industriousness, was the fix. This obsession with principle and excellence ends up assisting the Japanese and reaches a boiling point when, upon the arrival of a sabotage party (containing Shears), Nicholson defends the bridge from destruction. However, eventually awakened and remorseful of his involvement, Nicholson’s dying act is to help the bridge be destroyed.
There are ways in which I didn’t care for this film. The film is long, the plot is simple, and the B-plot (in which Shears flirts in a military hospital and is roped into returning to the camp) is jarringly out of tone. And I don’t know if I’m meant to look at Nicholson’s refusal to do manual labor as brave and principled or as idiotic and selfish (at one point, he risks the lives of his officers and his sick men). Not exactly the “servant leader”, by today’s standards. Finally, this 62 year old film plays with race and 'Western superiority' in uncomfortable ways.
Still, in a testament to the movie's layers, I think I came out mostly liking this film. The CinemaScope cinematography was beautiful, with the film's stunning color shots carefully framed with cunning depth. I love the way the film toyed with your expectations and I did learn to like the contrast between Nicholson’s caricaturish traits and complicated, evolving motives. Finally, by the film’s end I was genuinely feeling the tension of the moment and the final explosion was a rather impressive cinematic visual. The film manages to wrap up some rather complex themes of human nature in a chest-beating war movie exterior fit for Ron Swanson himself.