War has played a key role in the history of the United States, from the nation's founding

right down to the present. War made the U.S. independent, kept it together, increased its

size, and established it as a global superpower. Understanding America's wars is essential for understanding American history.

Welcome to Key Battles of American History,

a podcast in which we discuss American history through the lens of the most important battles of America's wars.

Here is your host, James Early.

Thank you. host, James Early. Hello and welcome to another episode of the Pacific War on film.

This is your host, James Early, as always. And as always, I've got my buddy Sean McIver with me. Sean, how are you, sir?

I'm doing all right. All right. Very good. Glad to hear that. We are, we have finally made it to

a film that Sean and I have been looking forward to talking about for quite some time. And that is

the classic 1957 film, The Bridge on the River Kwai. This is a film that won

many awards, but I will get to that in just a minute. For now, let's talk about some of the

basic information about the film, as we always do. The length is two hours and 41 minutes,

so it's a pretty good long movie. And it has been very well received. The average

positive rating by the critics on Rotten Tomatoes is 95%. Doesn't get too much better than that.

And the fans gave it, not much. Yeah. And the fans gave it 93%. So it's critically received and as well as popularly well received.

There's not much disparity between those two ratings.

No, there really isn't.

We've seen some big gaps in the past, but not on this one.

I think the idea is this definitely qualifies as universal acclaim.

Definitely.

IMDB average is 8.1, which I think is a little low.

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