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The Bridge on the River Kwai: Difference between revisions
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* [[Deadpan Snarker]]: Shears.
* [[Determinator]]: The demolition team really wants to blow up the bridge, and Nicholson ''really'' wants the bridge to be a success. See [[Know When to Fold'Em]].
**When the British arrive the other POWs are rotten and dying of weariness, bordom and jungle disease. Nicholson's men are proud and ''marching''.
* [[Downer Ending]]: Though it does a certain amount of irony to it.
* [[Face Death with Dignity]]: Nicholson and the officers almost let the Japanese kill them rather than violate their ethics by working on the bridge.
* [[
* [[A Father to His Men]] / [[An Officer and a Gentleman]]: Col. Nicholson. The character was based on [[Cheese-Eating Surrender Monkeys|French collaborators]] known to the author, while the actual colonel ([[wikipedia:Philip Toosey|Philip Toosey]]) was evidently above reproach. Even the Japanese second-in-command grew to respect him.
* [[Finagle's Law]]
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* [[The Squad]]
* [[Staff of Authority]]: Colonel Nicholson is shown carrying a swagger stick in the early scene in the movie when he informs the Japanese commandant that according to the Geneva Conventions, officers cannot be required to perform manual labor. Colonel Saito snaps the stick in half in a fury, while informing him that he is not in command. After the scene where Colonel Saito gives the Colonel permission to assume command of the prisoners and get the bridge built his way, the stick reappears. After the bridge is completed, he drops it in the river while talking to Colonel Saito.
* [[Strategy Versus Tactics]]: In the sense of putting short term(tactical)triumphs over strategic ones. Nichaelson is so obsessed with thumbing his nose at the Japanese by showing he can build a better bridge that he selfishly ignores the actual war effort.
* [[Stiff Upper Lip]]: A major theme of the film. Lampshaded by Saito, who goes on a rant about how much he ''hates'' the British for their stubborn resolve.
* [[Stuff Blowing Up]]: {{spoiler|For example, the bridge.}}
* [[Trailers Always Spoil]]: The DVD cover shows {{spoiler|the bridge getting blown up}}.
* [[Unfortunate Implications]]: While everyone else is being heroic, Shears is being set up as an [[Only Sane Man]]. Unfortunately he often comes across as preaching the virtues of cowardice at a time when heroics-if not irrational heroics like Nichaelson's really were needed.
* [[Very Loosely Based on a True Story]]: British POWs were forced to build a bridge over the River Kwai, but that's just about the only thing in the film that ''wasn't'' made-up.
* [[Well-Intentioned Extremist]]: Warden and his squad.
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