Now here we go. A war movie by which war movies as a genre are measured.

This is why we do this show, why I sit through Robocop with only a comparative minimum of

winging, so that more often than not we can luxuriate in the cooling water of the river Quai. It's not giving too much a way to reveal that we praise this movie,

but even if you've seen it a dozen times there are always new avenues of surprise.

An inquisitive, an open-minded viewer will find a great buffet of challenging ideas upon

which to feast.

The World War II films we've covered thus far have scarcely troubled the China-Burma India theater.

This territory of the war spanned all of southern Asia.

The Allied armies were building an extensive network of supply lines to reinforce the second front of Changchaisek's forces in China.

While the Japanese threatened Australia and pushed construction of their Burma railway

through the jungles of Thailand and what is now Myanmar toward India.

The Commonwealth nations were fighting to preserve their colonial empire as the Japanese

tried to protect their flank and extend their co-prosperity sphere of influence.

Now our story has two main threats.

The lesser of the two concerns William Holden's commander Sheers, an American enlisted man

impersonating an officer to gain favorable treatment

in a Japanese prison camp.

He escaped soon after Alec Guinness's lieutenant Colonel Nicholson arrives at the camp at the

head of a large group of British POWs.

The Nicholson, appalled by conditions, wages a pitched battle of wills with Japanese Colonel

Saito, the cruel and feckless commander of the camp.

Saito is using slave labor to build a railroad bridge over the titular river Quay.

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