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The Bridges at Toko-Ri Customer Reviews (1 - 3 of 11 Reviews)

very bad and poor
Sorry but i totaly disagree with all these positive reviews.I'm a fan of war classic films but this one is a mess.Nothing is moving,action is zero and filming is poor.
we are very far away from dirty dozen,battle of the bulge,midway,enemy below etc....
a total waste of time and money.

Here's One For Mick.
As a Navy brat, this was one of the most revered films by Navy pilots, and war buffs. For once, the stellar looks of Grace Kelly, could not divert you long from this small story of big impact.All flight deck operations and crew protocol are depicted with complete accuracy. When I read of Korean War vets complaining of not having a physical memorial for their experience, I think of "Pork Chop Hill" and this film.Those two films present the unvarnished truth of combat action on the men and their families. Frederick March plays the Admiral, who must maintain his distance and rank privileges without compromising personal feelings. William Holden plays the veteran pilot who's "pushing the envelope" and knows it. Earl Holliman and Mickey Rooney provide humor and hijinks that offset the seriousness of their importance to aircraft operations. The aerial photography is graphic and actual. When the F9F panthers line up at To-ko-ri for their runs, and the oxygen masks start breathing heavy, you're in for a real ride. This war yarn pulls no punches in how it feels sending good men to a violent end in a foreign land far from the comforts of home.

1950's Oddity
For those who remember it, the war in Korea remains an enigma from murky beginning in 1950 to wobbly close in 1953. It wasn't even called a `war'. Instead politicians dubbed it a `police action', which of course fooled no one (30,000 plus, dead Americans). Toko-ri stands as perhaps the only film to capture the popular uncertainty of that conflict. Some reviewers characterize the movie as anti-war, but it's not. Instead it reflects an American public's longing for civilian peacetime following the horrific sacrifices of WWII and the fresh sacrifices they were being asked to make for a new war they neither understood nor desired. In the movie, Fredric March's fatherly admiral makes the official case for intervention. In a key scene with a skeptical Grace Kelly, he lectures on communist aggression and the necessity of stopping them where they stand. In a routine actioner that would have been enough. It's not enough for William Holden's Captain Brubaker, however. And the fact that the Holden character continues to question his personal role reflects the mixed feelings of ordinary Americans, who continued to be torn between patriotic duty, on one hand, and the exotic nature of the conflict, on the other. To the film's lasting credit, the ending does not cop-out in a blaze of heroics that might otherwise undercut the script's ambivalent message. And it is this message of moral uncertainty that makes Bridges arguably the most accurate depiction of that long-ago war.

The movie itself remains an A-grade production with some fine aerial photography, shipboard action, and special effects. It's also one of Holden's best understated performances, superior to his Oscar role in Stalag 17. Not to be overlooked is the Mickey Rooney character which remains a revealing one. His wise-cracking personality and rowdy behavior amount to a holdover of a familiar WWII stereotype. Yet the clowning here fails to gel with the prevailing mood, and would vanish from serious treatments by the time Vietnam rolled around. Moreover, by the time of the movie's release (1954), audiences were eager to get back to the moral certainties of WWII, and studios responded with a spate of popular WWII fare, such as, Mr. Roberts (1955), Battle Cry (1955), and Operation Petticoat (1959). Except for a straggler or two, Hollywood would make no more Korean war films. And so, the process of forgetting that "Forgotten War" had begun. But, in retrospect, this was one of the few films of the decade to foreshadow the Vietnam trauma that was to follow, while the final shot of Holden's Captain Brubaker proved to be far more suggestive of war on the Asian mainland than critics could have anticipated (Toko-ri was not well received). It's only now, many years later, that viewers can appreciate the prophetic value of that final image along with the peculiar merits of this 1950's oddity.

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