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| Source: Wikipedia |
If, Satan forbid, hell ever invited the British, there'd be a reckoning. Dapper gents with stiff upper lips tactfully but firmly critique the infernal management, assume control of operations, and streamline the organizational structure to dramatically increase torment efficiency and simultaneously blast the front door wide open so the damned can just waltz out whistling "The Colonel Bogey March."
This happens, more or less.
In the Southeast Asian jungle, a remote prison camp receives a shipment of Brits. The commandant puts them to work building a rail line from Bangkok to Rangoon, on a schedule that keeps slipping back. But the limey boss, a colonel, maintains a strict set of standards. He won't let officers do work. He suggests alternatives, backs up his claims with the Geneva convention, and for his trouble spends much of the movie in solitary confinement. Ultimately, he inspires the men to do the best work they can. Not to aid the evil empire, but to keep up morale.
Meanwhile, the crass American hero just wants to get out of there. So long as the heat, humidity, sickness, snakes, and flying bullets don't take him out first.
British cheek and American pluck clash with Japanese disciprine. It drives the commandant bonkers. And as fast as the colonel's boys build the titular bridge, Allied commandos move to blow it up. There's no more room for Stockholm syndrome in this story than there is for significant female characters in your basic war movie.
If this whole scenario sounds implausible to your cynicism-stoppered ears, rest assured. There is a reckoning to the reckoning. For all the inspirational international cooperation, the end retaliates with the disastrous consequences of blisteringly stupid misunderstandings. Not to say it's bad -- I'll have you know it's satisfying as hell. Or as satisfying as watching hell blown open by British ingenuity unknowingly collaborating with American accident.
161 minutes.
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