The classic story of English POWs in Burma forced to build a bridge to aid the war effort of their Japanese captors. British and American intelligence officers conspire to blow up the structure, but Col. Nicholson, the commander who supervised the bridge's construction, has acquired a sense of pride in his creation and tries to foil their plans.
The Bridge on the River Kwai is a 1957 epic war film directed by David Lean and based on the novel The Bridge over the River Kwai, written by Pierre Boulle. Boulle's novel and the film's screenplay are almost entirely fictional, but use the construction of the Burma Railway, in 1942–1943, as their historical setting. The cast includes William Holden, Alec Guinness, Jack Hawkins, and Sessue Hayakawa.
