Based on ther book "Through the Valley of the Kwai" "To End All Wars" centers around Ernest Gordon, a young soldier who wants to create a school of higher learning despite the criticism of his superior officer, Ian Campbell, who insists on escape, and JimReardon, the lone American who is running a black market. Under the relentless brutality of the camp, the only way for the soldiers to survive is to find what gives their lives meaning.
This movie is based on actual events during World War 11 when 61,000 Allied POW’s were forced to build the Thailand-Burma Railway. The way they are treated is horrendous in this film, as they are bullied, tortured, beaten, and underfed.
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Although the film features themes of forgiveness and sacrifice, such as the men ministering to the Japanese wounded at war’s end, the violence level is strong.
- https://dove.org/review/8454-to-end-all-wars/
One of the relative few decent edifying films and legal to watch here. Basically ignore the rest.
Similar to Bridge on the River Kwai, one of my favorites when I was a kid and my first acquaintance with Alec Guiness.
Have to check it out. Thanks.
The beginning of the film looks lovely and I’m drawn to bagpipe music. (I’m half Scottish.)
I’ll watch this. Thanks!
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The bridge is still there. It was bombed by aircraft and then rebuilt with aid from Japan as war reparations.
The river is the “Kwae”, actually. “Kwai” is a Thai word meaning water buffalo. There is a Saphan Kwai [Kwai Bridge] in Bangkok, but it has nothing to do with the novel, or the railroad.
The railroad was built mainly up the east side of the Kwae river, a tributary of the Mae Khlong river, but does not cross it. The bridge was over the Mae Khlong river, to the east, just upstream from where the Kwae came in from the west.
The Thais, wanting to capitalize on the movie, and already having a railroad bridge in place, wanted have an actual “Bridge on the River Kwai”, but weren’t about to move the bridge. So they slightly renamed the rivers. They renamed the Mae Khlong upstream from the junction, including where the bridge is, as the “Kwae Yai” [big Kwae]; and named the actual Kwae as the “Kwae Noi” [little Kwae”].
They kept the name Mae Khlong for the part of the river after the Kwae Noi joins the Kwae Yai.
I’ve been up there several times. The railroad goes about twenty-thirty miles further up the Kwae Noi past the bridge.
The Japs were brutal beyond belief. They deserved Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And to this day they’re unrepentant about what they did.
Worse yet subsequent generations of young Japanese are totally ignorant of what their fathers, grandfathers and great grandfathers did during WW2.