The re-staging of Operation Market Garden, the Allies' ill-conceived attempt to capture a string of Nazi-occupied Dutch bridges, takes three hours on screen, and the complex logistics of the attack seem sufficient in themselves to hold your interest for that long. But the chief reason for the film's largeness is its desire to embrace as many as possible of the known truths about war. The one truth that eludes its grasp, though, is that of a country actually immersed in a war effort; and for that truth it would be better to return to movies closer to the issue. This is a tsk-tsk war movie of and for the Seventies, a movie of lamentable waste and unrewarded heroism. It is most interested in the human side of battle, and even its use of big-money stars in small roles should be understood as a simple short-cut to making you care for the people. Among the more memorable character sketches: Edward Fox as the gung-ho infantry commander who urges his troops to think of themselves as the U.S. Cavalry in a Western movie, charging to the rescue of besieged homesteaders; and Anthony Hopkins as the gentlemanly paratrooper who immediately accomplishes what he is assigned to do, and then has to absorb a terrible battering day after day while he waits for his comrades to come through. Richard Attenborough directs this traffic-jam project with a respectable balance between perfunctory clichés and thoughtful touches (e.g., the mocking laughter of the geese that greets Sean Connery at the end of his bitter, skulking retreat). With Dirk Bogarde, Michael Caine, Gene Hackman, Ryan O'Neal, Robert Redford, Maximilian Schell, Liv Ullmann. (1977) — Duncan Shepherd
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