Because there exists a general bias against action-oriented movies in the critical establishment the movie-going public often favors the adventure film offering it undue attention with box office receipts and popular concentration. One reason for this difference of opinion between industry professionals and lay people is a presumption among aestheticians, historians and critics that adventure stories are necessarily stripped of complexity and human interest.

In the hands of skilled but dispassionate filmmakers such a lack of depth and affect easily translates into being hardly worth the trouble of serious consideration despite occasional bursts of technological innovation that revolutionizes the art of telling stories on film. But in the hands of skilled and passionate filmmakers such a surface sheen of easily identified moral and ethical worldviews and kinetic activities can be elevated to levels of expression heretofore unknown in the cinema.

Thus there is a knifepoint precipice upon which the adventure film teeters. Leaning too far one direction it's quickly ignored as pap for the public who will mindlessly support it because they don't know any better and will fill a few hours of leisure time with whatever's available. Yet if it leans too far in another direction the adventure movie can create entirely new disciplines in the art of motion picture craftsmanship.

Within this stark circumstance the adventure film with its far-flung plots and larger than life heroes and villains, when are produced with appropriate aplomb and energy, can expose our assumptions as moviegoers and people all at once. In the cracks between characterization and performance, action and reaction, movement and stasis is the set of precepts upon which adventure movies are built. So too is revealed the confrontation of order with chaos that the genre implicitly uses to unravel the secret human initiative informing life with the looming idea of eventual doom.

Quick to ignore theses superstructures existing beneath adventure movies the critical establishment focuses on genre tropes that largely constitute a symphony of violence with their omnipresent explosions, rattling bullets and screams of anguish. What's missed in this dismissal is the subtle way these superficial marks of violence and destruction actually reflect something else about society in general. Even when such a dismissal is appropriate for a specific film it still limits the frame for viewing other adventure movies and minimizes their emotional impact behind descriptions of sensation without addressing the genre's deeper focus on machine-like men acting against one another, and what those struggles might mean.

Budgeted at $3 million, originally intended as Howard Hawks vehicle and filmed in Ceylon doubling for parts of Southeast Asia, The Bridge on the River Kwai is that sort of movie standing at the crossroads of its genre working to avoid categorization from lazy critics. It is an adventure movie with emotional truth and technical brilliance that raises it above the form's usual rabble of explosions and rolling boulders. It is also a rich and absorbing portrait of narrowly focused, serendipitous confrontation and the kind of moral relativism stemming from people working in states of intense desperation.

David Lean's movie of a Sam Spiegel production is a crackerjack picture from its opening frame through its closing moment. As such it is a clinic in visual storytelling even while employing one of the more complex scripts concerned with wartime experience in the gap between the end of World War II and the start of Vietnam. Gone are easy labels like "good guys" and "bad guys" while, instead, the film works with immaterial notions like duty, loyalty and legacy giving each idea a tangible form through characters who fulfill their parts in a potent morality play.

Opening in early 1943 within the confines of a Japanese prison camp, a British officer named Colonel Nicholson (Alec Guinness) surrenders his force to the camp's Japanese overseer, Colonel Saito (Sessue Hayakawa). In so doing Nicholson acknowledges his order to surrender but also gives notice of his devotion to military integrity that his captor seems hell-bent on breaking. Witnessing the exchange with cynical resignation is an American POW named Major Shears (William Holden) who thinks Nicholson is mad for taking on Saito the way he does.

Slowly each character's motivation becomes clear. Nicholson is intent on maintaining leadership over his men but seems willing to accept his incarceration. Saito is acting with ruthlessness under a directive to erect a bridge across the River Kwai for Japanese expansion into India but if he should fail he's honor-bound to commit hari kari. Shears, meanwhile, is concerned only with daily survival while waiting for an outside shot of escape as his only salvation.

When Shears manages to make good his escape Nicholson and Saito's struggle takes on its epic proportions. First Nicholson refuses to kowtow to his overseer and then he remains a thorn in the side of his troubled master by being willing to die in the defense of his ideals. Eventually Saito accepts his charge's creed as politically useful and ends up with a better bridge design from the imprisoned British staff, much to his relief.

As bridge construction begins Shears wanders into a friendly village and is returned to Allied command where he convalesces beneath the watchful eye of a British special operations commander named Major Warden (Jack Hawkins). Taking his American charge in hand and pointing out his checkered past, Warden involves Shears in a return to Saito's camp with the intention of demolishing the geographically critical bridge.

With mounting urgency the imperatives directing each character become more complicated. Nicholson loses perspective on the war collaborating on the bridge's construction as the tool for controlling his men despite the fact it will also contribute to the further destruction of human life. Saito learns to temper his outlook and trust in the expertise of his captured minions only to lose his native sense of superiority. Ever the opportunist, Shears learns the importance of achieving higher ideals and becomes a self-sacrificial leader.

In the climax Warden and Shears lie in wait to destroy the bridge on the River Kwai precisely when a train filled with soldiers is set to cross it. Nicholson uncovers their plan and reveals their position only to gain final perspective on what he's created. Saito falls in the melee for control of the firing pin and Nicholson manages to destroy the bridge after being struck by shrapnel from a falling mortar.

Grossing some $27 million at the domestic box office, The Bridge on the River Kwai delivered glimpses of far-off locations, native peoples, shoot-outs and a story of personal conflict stitched over an anonymous moment in the Pacific war with Japan. It also successfully pitched a deep psychological study of three principle figures, Nicholson, Saito and Shears, only to discover that the motives beneath men's actions are often more complex than mere moral and ethical ideas of right and wrong.

While Nicholson is the film's reluctant hero, his unvarnished sense of loyalty to a code of military conduct nearly robs him of independent judgment and the recognition of his role in the destruction of people at the hands of Imperial Japan. Saito too, as the movie's ostensible villain, is seen as a conflicted man troubled by his responsibilities for administering the prison camp alongside his struggles to survive the bridge's construction that will otherwise be his bloody end if left incomplete. Likewise Shears is disconnected from the politics of warring nations but is forced to reconsider his isolation in light of his unique insight into the prison camp, if not his unusually strong survival instinct.

Of course the movie concludes rather famously with a sobering note in the history of adventure films. Nicholson falls to Warden's mortar, Saito is knifed to death and Shears is lost to the sniping of Japanese soldiers. All three die fulfilling their individual roles just as the genre's cartoonish spin is fulfilled in a tragic fusillade of death and destruction as the bridge collapses under explosive force.

Without wasting time and still using the film's entire 161-minute length, Lean directed a story filled with psychological intricacies, criss-crossing characters and rich historical circumstances. Though Cary Grant was originally intended to star before other commitments ended his involvement the result was one of Holden's most physically impressive performances. In similar fashion it was also perhaps Guinness's greatest part to date along with being a return to the limelight for Hayakawa who was once a noted silent film actor.

As an interesting historical footnote Lean's film is also important for complications related to its writing credit. As a casualty of the Red Scares of the early '50s, blacklisted screenwriters Michael Wilson and Carl Foreman went unlisted despite their contributions to the film. Frenchmen Pierre Boulle, who wrote the source novel, was considered the film's writer despite being unable to read or write English. Fortunately the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences eventually corrected this oversight and retrospectively awarded the Oscar to Wilson and Foreman in 1984 just before the film was restored with their names finally added to the listed credits.

At the time of its release, however, The Bridge on the River Kwai was seemingly untroubled by such individual troubles. Nominated for the Academy Award against Peyton Place, Sayonara, 12 Angry Men and Witness for the Prosecution its truly awesome scope, strong script and remarkable filmmaking technique made it a shoe-in for movie of the year. Only Paths of Glory, itself a war movie with adventure undercurrents, was close to equaling its message about men in conflict and though good arguments exist about the strength of 12 Angry Men, it is to Lean's picture we nod in memory of what good art looks like.

Just as history made Guinness, Holden and Kenneth Alford's whistle-friendly "Colonel Bogey" stars in a conventional adventure story with remarkably unconventional values, it's important to enjoy their work in its proper format. That is to say, The Bride on the River Kwai was shot in CinemaScope using an aspect ratio far wider and more daring than what has long been the ideal widescreen format of 1.85:1. To therefore ignore the effect of CinemaScope on the finished film would be to pretend it was produced in a language other than English.

Just as we are trained to understand the distinctions between different dialects of English-speakers, so must our eyes be trained in the different visual fields provided by CinemaScope, widescreen formats and the more typical televisual aspect ration used to screen DVDs and videotapes. Medium specificity requires us to be sensitive to Lean and Spiegel's sense of purpose with their overlarge adventure movie. But it's also necessary for us to remember how CinemaScope influenced the organization of scenes and the ability of actors to work within the frame building characters that extend far beyond the pall of typical adventure movies.

In short, The Bridge on the River Kwai is a genre-bending piece of movie art that demonstrates how technical considerations can, and often do, impact action-oriented genres to heighten their thrills and improve their overall affect. Trying to see Lean's film in its original aspect ration requires attention and can prove quite difficult. Though the version seen on cable TV and found in the "Classics" section of video stores will suffice, only a copy of The Bridge on the River Kwai struck from the original print will reveal its true artistic and technical brilliance.

See it in CinemaScope not just because it won the Oscar for Best Motion Picture of 1957 but also because it's a great adventure film. You won't be disappointed.