MovieChat Forums > The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) Discussion > What I learned from this film

What I learned from this film

posted 10 years ago by la_follette
8 replies | jump to latest

The Brits are heroic and selfless, and committed to duty. Not the cowardly, abject losers who surrendered 90,000 troops at Singapore when 30,000 Japanese showed up and looked at them menacingly. I'm glad the film cleared up that misconception.

The Brits are dedicated to fair play. Despite throwing Gandhi in prison 4 or 5 times for peacefully demonstrating, starving millions of Hindus during the British-created 1943 "famine" and shooting to kill in Northern Ireland, we've now been set straight by the truth-seeking Brits in charge of this movie.

The Brits build things well. Who knew? My parents owned a British car and it spent 90% of the time in the repair shop. It leaked oil and the Brits failed to cover the distributor cap so when water splashed on it the car stalled. The roof leaked like a sieve. The windows didn't roll up correctly. When I look back, it would seem like the kind of car a child of 8 would build in his dad's garage, with parts picked up at the landfill. But now, thanks to this movie, I know the Brits only build the very best, with workmanship that the Japanese should envy.

[–] DBloodnok 10 years ago

I think you fancy us, what with you spending all your time talking about us.

Just ask us out - maybe get us some flowers and chocolates? How about a movie? Play your cards right and you can take the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland to the movies. Just don't try to get 'handy' on the back row.

"Someone has been tampering with Hank's memories."

[–] la_follette 10 years ago

I don't do pity dates.

[–] tenkisoratoti 10 years ago

The entire French Army, 1 million strong, collapsed and routed in 1940. The US Army was all but beaten and routed in Dec. 1944 but were it not for the Germans running out of fuel would have been beaten in exactly the same way the French 9th Army was. The US Army in the Philippines was defeated despite the US not having to commit to a desperate war on 3 fronts spanning the entire globe. The German 6th Army surrendered in its entirety during Stalingrad. The Italians surrendered en masse in 1940... etc. Your deluded, hate filled xenophobic rant has no clarity I'm afraid.

The British Indian Army inflicted the biggest land based defeat on the Japanese at Imphal in conditions far worse than anywhere else in the Pacific/SEA and then took the surrender of over 1 million Japanese troops in Malaya and Singapore.

You clearly have a serious complex (inferiority springs to mind)... I can't gauge your nationality but I could probably make a good guess.

[–] la_follette 10 years ago

You haven't rebutted one point I made. The French army is irrelevant. Surrendering to the well-rested and battle-ready Germans in 1940 is not a humiliation. Surrendering to the tired and battle-worn Japanese who just finished a China campaign, when you outnumber them 3 to 1, is very humiliating. Churchill himself said it you thick putz!

[–] DBloodnok 10 years ago

la_follette - we could waver on the 'no hands' stand, if that sways your pity in our direction. Don't knock it 'til you've tried it, big boy.

"Someone has been tampering with Hank's memories."

[–] la_follette 10 years ago

Yep, you're a Brit alright. A country of Jimmy Saviles.

[–] DBloodnok 10 years ago

Nahhhhh - don't play that way, but whatever floats your boat, la_follette. That said, I hold nothing against the French.

"Someone has been tampering with Hank's memories."

[–] tenkisoratoti 10 years ago

If you'd actually read my post you would have seen the rebuttal quite clearly.

The Japanese troops that invaded Malaya were their BEST. These troops included those from the Imperial Guard. The British Commonwealth forces in Malaya and Singapore were all but a skeleton force of half trained Indian Army personnel whose best officers and rank&file had been siphoned off to fight in North Africa and Europe.

Members of the 5/14th Punjabis had never even seen a tank before they were confronted by them outside Kuala Lumpar. There was no jungle training and like the Americans in the Philippines, no answer to the initial fanaticism of Japanese fighting methods.

Plan 21, originally put down 1921, was an obsolete and out dated model that assumed that the British Empire and Commonwealth would not be fighting on 3 fronts thousands of miles from each other.

Their equipment was outmodded too (Buffalo's VS Zeros, etc).

Furthermore, unlike the French, Malaya was a far flung (albeit lucrative) colonial outpost, not the British homeland.