Critic Reviews

Not only did surviving vets get to see their World War II exploits (in the September 1944 Arnhem debacle) played out spectacularly for all the world to see, but several got to coach the actors playing them. [28 Dec 2001]

An absorbing, well-crafted, honorable movie that seems almost as ambitious as the original operation itself. [20 Jun 1977, p.65]

First-rate blockbuster preaching an anti-war message but laying on grand battle sequences as it recreates, coherently and convincingly, Operation Market Garden, the Allied Forces' airborne assault on Arnhem in 1944 that was intended to end the Second World War by Christmas. [19 Nov 2006, p.2]

Richard Attenborough's cast is stellar (including Anthony Hopkins, Laurence Olivier, Sean Connery, Dirk Bogarde, Ryan O'Neal and Robert Redford) and his pre-CGI achievement staggering. [28 Mar 2007]

Attenborough's underrated 1977 epic A Bridge Too Far fashioned an antiwar statement from the foolhardiness that stranded 35,000 paratroopers behind German lines in an attempt to take key bridges. [02 Feb 2002, p.C01]

One may feel limitations on the dramatic side, but Bridge is an unqualified pictorial achievement.

The movie is massive, shapeless, often unexpectedly moving, confusing, sad, vivid and very, very long.

Futility and frustration are the overriding emotional elements in A Bridge Too Far, Joseph E. Levine's sprawling Second World War production [from the novel by Cornelius Ryan] about a 1944 military operation botched by both Allied and German troops.

This sprawling epic rewards patience with an emotional pay-off and non-triumphant ending that reminds us all too starkly of the sacrifices made during war.

The movie's big and expensive and filled with stars, but it's not an epic. It's the longest B-grade war movie ever made.