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| The Bridge on the River Kwai | 
 enlarge | Director: David Lean
Actors: William Holden, Jack Hawkins, Alec Guinness, Sessue Hayakawa, James Donald
Studio: Sony Pictures
Category: DVD
List Price: $24.95
Buy New: $12.94
You Save: $12.01 (48%)
New (56) Used (18) Collectible (2) from $10.67
Avg. Customer Rating:  165 reviews
Sales Rank: 3139
Format: Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, Dvd-video, Widescreen, Ntsc
Languages: English (Original Language), Spanish (Original Language), English (Subtitled), Spanish (Subtitled), French (Subtitled), Portuguese (Subtitled), Georgian (Subtitled), Chinese (Subtitled), Thai (Subtitled), French (Dubbed), Portuguese (Dubbed)
Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Number Of Items: 1
Running Time: 162
Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1
DVD Layers: 2
DVD Sides: 1
Picture Format: Anamorphic Widescreen
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.3
Dimensions (in): 7.5 x 5.3 x 0.6
MPN: COLD05278D
ISBN: 0767853547
UPC: 043396052789
EAN: 9780767853545
ASIN: B00004XPPC
Theatrical Release Date: 1957
Release Date: November 21, 2000
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
 The Bridge on the River Kwai January 10, 2007
3 out of 4 found this review helpful
This is a classic movie that I use to watch at night with my dad who passed many years ago. Yet it still brings back the memories and interest that it did when I was a kid.
 great movie from a great director and actors January 5, 2007
1 out of 3 found this review helpful
this is another wonderful movie done by the greatest david lean. i just wish that now and in the near future, new directors like him with big heart would appear again. by watching this movie without computerized special effects manipulation, the realistic feeling was far too superior to all the movies that flooded in theaters and on dvds nowadays. by comparison, what clint eastwood did and is doing now are little bit closer to what david lean did before, but still lagged behind about mile long. david lean is one of the rare directors who could transform good screenplays and made them so vividly alive and presented to us with the most wonderful cinematography. he's one of the pillars of our human civilization.
great clasic January 3, 2007
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
This Movie is one of the clasics in the film world although the movies is somewhat true but never the less its a must see movie.
Having been to the actual site where the bridge is it brings home the tragic loss of life, along with the conditions that the men had to face and having been in the Malayan forces in 1959 to 1961 and the life of the jungle is and does test your capable abilties.i am in awe of the courage of the men at the bridge of the River Kwai. I treasure the movie as a prized collection.
D J gartner
Winner of 7 Academy Awards... December 18, 2006
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
David Lean's "The Bridge on the River Kwai" like Jean Renoir's "Grand Illusion" is an anti-heroic war film, set in a prisoner of war camp environment... But there, the point of resemblance came to an end...
"The Bridge on the River Kwai" is an adventure film in which the nature of World War II is explored... And if in "Grand Illusion" the characters were described by a great artist who treasures their common humanity, in "The Bridge on the River Kwai" they are forced to carry out their destinies by an officer who cannot bear to see his bridge blown up...
Escape is almost impossible from the Japanese camp located near the Kwai River in Burma... The prisoners are badly treated by cruel guards... The camp commander is a rigid psychopath... Conditions are hard to bear... Psychological state of the war British prisoners in constant alteration...
Into the presumptuous situation comes Colonel Nicholson (Alec Guinness in a fascinating performance), a strict, serene, dedicated British Officer, deeply concerned for the welfare of his men...
Nicholson is under severe pressure from the stubborn Japanese Colonel Saito (Sessue Hayakawa) for insisting on his attachment to the Geneva convention and refusing to allow his officers to be used on the construction of the strategic bridge...
Nichilson survives the oppressive punishment imposed on him, but his obsession has risen to near-madness... He agrees to help the Japanese build their bridge, and in his determination to find victory in defeat, he ignores that the bridge, which he insists must be a 'proper bridge,' will serve the Japanese objectives against the British troops...
In addition to the powerful rules of a prison camp picture, captors against captives and an interesting moral respect to a military code, a third element, in the story, is introduced: a small commando team led by Major Warden (Jack Hawkins) and an American sailor (William Holden) whose mission is to destroy the strategic bridge..
The film leads swiftly to a suspenseful climax: a Japanese train and a Commando force directed to a same goal, the Brige of the River Kwai...
Each character, in the motion picture, has a valid reason for what he is doing, and each elaborates a relationship to the bridge revealed to be obsession and insane...
"The Bridge on the River Kwai" hits with 'war' in a compelling logic of events, the indulgence of self-destruction.
With a great visual beauty and terrific whistling tune March, "The Bridge on the River Kwai" is a great dramatic entertainment of the wills of men...
David Lean's First Great American Epic November 10, 2006
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
THE BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI opened in 1957 to rave reviews and a big boxoffice-over $35 million. It is arguably Lean's greatest-at least of his epics, and you can see his skill with camera, use of editing for more of a dramatic punch and flawed heroes that would soon evolve into trademarks of his work.
Alec Guiness deservedly won the Oscar for the role of the English officer in captivity who is so inflexible, so unbending that these traits lead to his doom. It's definitely a performance of major proportions. Lean got more out of Guinness than anybody else, and it shows.
William Holden, of whom I am a particular fan, is the nominal star lending that star power to another performance that looks so easy it was overlooked at Oscar time (remember Clark Gable in GWTW), but is so
wonderfully nuanced you are not sure for the majority of the picture
who is the real heel and who is the bigger fool.
Add S. I. Hayakawa as the pedantic but vulnerable Japanese prison commander and you have another rather ambiguous, fully layered character.
He had to learn most of his lines by rote as his English was not very fluent. This led to slowdowns in shooting, which Lean resented but certainly was not in the same league as the hideous weather conditions
which, on par for a Lean epic frequently shut down production.
A truly intelligent "big" picture that not only delivers on size and scope
but on intimate feelings and relationships in the middle of a vast historical upheaval, THE BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI is certainly one of the great films of all time.
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