Couldn't finish re-watching this movie for this review. Time-filler for a Saturday afternoon. Uncomplicated storyline and characters. George Segal probably miscast. Role needs more gravitas, which Gazarra has in spades but he's wasted. Just badly directed. Watch an episode of "Combat" if you want more tension and better depiction of soldiers.

"Blue Max" director John Guillermin's military action thriller "The Bridge at Remagen," with George Segal, Robert Vaughn, and Ben Gazzara, ranks at a good World War II movie. Clearly from the attitude of the U.S. Army soldiers—not their pompous superiors—these G.I. Joes see combat as a dirty business that you can get you killed. No doubt, the disillusion that most Americans had with Vietnam had tainted the storytelling. The Richard Yates & William Roberts screenplay has U.S. Brig. Gen. Shinner (E.G. Marshall) sending soldiers from Major Barnes' command (Bradford Dillman) into "Indian country" to capture 50-thousand German soldiers. Guillermin's movie shifts back and forth between the U.S. Army—the Brits and French have nothing to do with what being blown up or shot at here—the German Army. The German General Staff wants General Von Brock (Peter van Eyck of "Shakalo") to destroy the bridge so the Americans will not have a highway into the Third Reich. Naturally, Von Brock is horrified at the cost; 75-thousand German soldiers will be trapped behind the lines. Von Brock balks at the order and now must sign it to assure that he will carry it out. Von Brock assigns the inevitable task to destroying the bridge to German Major Paul Kreuger (Robert Vaughn of "The Magnificent Seven"). Like most 1960's World War II film post-"The Young Lions," Kreuger is treated as a sympathetic character with a daunting task. Of course, history dictates that Kreuger will not be able to hold the bridge, so suspense is limited in most respects. Nevertheless, the logistics of the action scenes, a robust cast, Elmer Bernstein's atmospheric orchestral score, Stanley Cortez's crisp, wide-screen cinematography, and an anti-heroic tone make "The Bridge at Remagen" a movie worth watching. Segal's Lieutenant Phil Hartman is the kind of character that Tom Hanks might have played. Ben Gazzara's skulduggery as a souvenir collector strikes the right tone for the anti-war era during which the film was made. World War II fanatics may complain about the post-World War tanks that turn up here, too. The armored vehicles look like they are hauling butt a little too fast in the opening credits, but it creates momentum. The irony is what happens to the German Major. Although it has nowhere near the scale of "The Longest Day," "The Bridge at Remagen" is a must-see for World War II moviegoers.

"When the rich wage war, it's the poor who die." - Sartre One of the best war films you've never heard of, "The Bridge at Remagen" (1969) was directed by John Guillermin. Guillermin was responsible for two other excellent war films: 1964's "Guns at Batasi", a fairly complex look at the "end" of British colonialism, and 1958's "I Was Monty's Double", a clever comedy, albeit one which never rises above the level of war-time propaganda."Remagen" opens with an amazing sequence: a convoy of American tanks are hurtling across Europe at breakneck speed. Crashing through villages, skidding along hilltops, they're also tracing the bank of the River Rhine. Up ahead is the still-intact Dusseldorf-Oberkassel bridge. Lieutenant Hartman (George Segel), leader of the American convoy, wants to take the bridge. The German Army is in full retreat on the other side. If he crosses, he can hit their flanks, penetrate German lines and press toward Berlin.Hartman's plan fails. His convoy is ambushed by German forces on the opposite side of the river. Shots are exchanged and the Dusseldorf-Oberkassel bridge is destroyed. This is where "The Bridge at Remagen" gets interesting. On Hartman's side of the river are several large groups of stranded German forces. They're racing down the river in an attempt to reach the last surviving bridge on the Rhine: the Bridge at Remagen. Hartman's racing them to that bridge. On the opposite side of the Rhine, meanwhile, German Major Paul Kruger (Robert Vaughn) is doing the same.Time is thus crucial in "The Bridge at Remagen". German and American forces are granted no sleep, no rest, no time for reloading or resupply. Everyone's fighting a running battle, everyone racing desperately toward Remagen. Once there, the film essentially becomes a siege movie, German and American forces slugging it out over the Rhine. Eyeing each other through binoculars like arch enemies, Major Kruger and Lieutenant Hartman quickly become locked in a battle of wits."Remagen" is remarkably brisk for a film released in 1969. Shot like a Sam Peckinpah movie, but without the facile nihilism, Guillermin's film is all rapid editing, snap-zooms, audacious crane-shots, amazing helicopter-shots and stylish hand-held. The film's pyrotechnics, hardware and the blunt immediacy of its gun-battles, are likewise head and shoulders above most blood-and-guts war flicks of the 1960s. With a premise that demands urgency, there's no other war movie from the decade which looks and moves like this.Thematically, "Remagen" offers a strange mix of World War 2 pulp fiction, Vietnam era revisionism and counterculture sentiments. Like the works of Sam Fuller, it adopts the tone of the combat comic-books of the 1940s and 1950s - which were aimed at adolescents - but then attempts to inject some sophistication. Like the zany war films of the sixties ("Dirty Dozen", "Kelly's Heroes", "Castle Keep", "MASH", "Catch 22" etc), the film's spirit also wholly belongs to the Beat and Hippie generations. "Should I care?" an American soldier asks, when matters of victory are discussed. "Who's the real enemy?" a German mumbles on his deathbed. Axis and Allies, then, are not mortal enemies but brothers in arms. Explicitly referring to one another as friends, both are but pawns cynically offered as fodder by cruel commanders and waging Imperialists. Elsewhere the film subverts the usual dehumanising portrayals of German soldiers by lingering on dead German kids, mournful fathers, crowds of refugees, the bravery of the Wehrmacht and the many German sons and daughters tragically wasted on war."The Longest Day" (1960) was perhaps the most famous WW2 war film released in the 1960s. Aesthetically spectacular, but thematically dumb, the film kowtowed to America's rather mythological understanding of World War 2. "Remagen's" too generic to engage in any meaningful historical or political revisionism, but it does draw constant parallels between Major Kurger and Lieutenant Hartman, between German grunt and American grunt. And where most Western war films engage in games of victimhood – our brave heroes always a small band outnumbered by hordes of "savages" ("Black Hawk Down", "Saving Private Ryan", "300" etc) - "Remagen" does the opposite. It is Major Kruger who is outnumbered, out-gunned, and under siege. It is Major Kruger who must bravely hold back a seemingly unending flow of enemy tanks and troops. In "The Bridge at Remagen", both German and American grunts are simultaneously glorified and pitied. "The Bridge at Remagen" was filmed in Czechoslovakia. It boasts a fine score by Elmer Bernstein and some picturesque location photography. George Segel, excellent as an American officer in "King Rat", is called upon to play a simpler character here: your archetypal American hero, only more jaded. "Remagen" also conveys well large scale tactics, geography and the spatial relationship between vying armies. Of all the WW2 movie of the 1960s ("Anzio", "Patton", "The Longest Day", "Battle of the Bulge" etc), it's arguably the best.8.5/10 - See "Decision Before Dawn", "The Victors" (1963) and "The Spy Who Came in From the Cold".

The Bridge at Remagen is directed by John Guillermin and collectively adapted to screenplay by William Roberts, Richard Yates and Roger O. Hirson from the book The Bridge at Remagen: The Amazing Story of March 7, 1945. It stars George Segal, Robert Vaughn, Ben Gazzara, Bradford Dillman and E.G. Marshall. A Panavision/ De Luxe Color production, music is by Elmer Bernstein and cinematography by Stanley Cortez.Film is a fictionalised account of the battle for control of The Ludendorff Bridge over the Rhine during the tail end of World War II.A war film that's rich with action and no little intelligence as it views the battle equally from both sides of the warring factions. The bridge is crucial to the war effort to both sides, but for different reasons, here the narrative is a little complex so total investment in the dialogue is strongly recommended. The characterisations are high quality, even if the war is hell weariness of the American soldiers had been done many times before in other notable war movies. Guillermin thrusts the psychologically hurt soldiers into desperate combat situations, from which we the viewers indulge in seeing the survival of the fittest. A sweeping score from Bernstein, gritty looking photography by Cortez, and a cast giving good turns, rounds this out as a thoroughly enjoyable World War II picture. 7/10