Bridge over the River Kwai is a film from a different world

Bridge Over the River Kwai isn’t just a war film; it’s a sweeping, tension-filled narrative that wrestles with duty, honour, and the brutal demands of integrity in the most oppressive circumstances. Yet it addresses issues almost entirely foreign to modern TV and filmmaking because it focuses almost entirely on the concept of honour.

In that sense, it is a film unlike anything I’ve seen from this century because it doesn’t bend itself to the cultural softening I’ve come to expect. Here, characters confront their morals, sometimes misguided, to do what they believe is right, even when it means engaging in near-absurd dedication to principle, with consequences that are anything but black and white.

Directed by David Lean, Bridge Over the River Kwai tells the story of British prisoners in a Japanese POW camp during World War II who are ordered to build a bridge across the River Kwai. But this isn’t just a story of Allied soldiers slogging through the jungle to fulfil a demand. It’s about Colonel Nicholson (played by Alec Guinness), a rigid officer whose obsession with order and duty transforms the bridge from an enemy project to a symbol of British perseverance. He sees the construction as a testament to British honour despite the fact he’s doing his enemy’s bidding. He thinks he is doing his duty to obey the enemy.

In a modern context, where pop culture constantly seeks simple villains and easy heroes, Bridge Over the River Kwai is a far cry from today’s cinematic universe. Nicholson’s dedication to completing the bridge is rooted in that honourable yet twisted adherence to duty. There’s a sense of almost archaic pride in work done correctly, even when it is pointless and harmful to his side.

The film also shows the grim reality of working under oppression without romanticising it. The POWs are exhausted, battered, and working in some of the worst conditions imaginable. Yet, they don’t rebel in the Hollywood sense. They endure, they adapt, and they work together. These themes of doing challenging work under soul-crushing pressure and finding dignity within it feel starkly out of place in 2025.

Living in modern Isle of Man or Australia, there’s an echo of a bygone era of admiring resilience and camaraderie. The movie strikes a nerve because it reminds us of the power of persistence, even when moral lines are blurred. In our world of instant gratification, of dopamine-fuelled validation from the nearest digital device, Bridge Over the River Kwai almost serves as a cautionary tale: honour, duty, and grit don’t necessarily yield rewards, nor are they always rational, but they mean something.