GEORGE SEGAL WITH BEN GAZARRA IN 'THE BRIDGE AT REMAGEN'

George Segal and Ben Gazzara in The Bridge at Remagen Year: 1969 Rates: ***

George Segal had already played a resilient soldier in a World War II movie, KING RAT, who scrounges off the dead and unlucky to make money from the living...

Which is Ben Gazarra's scene-stealing maverick role in British director John Guillerman's THE BRIDGE AT REMAGEN as secondary-lead to Segal's authority-hating, war-weary lieutenant...

George Segal, Ben Gazarra and Frank Webb in The Bridge at Remagen

In what's another latter-1960's WW2 vehicle with built-in Vietnam-era anti-war sensibilities, and where diligently uptight leaders like Bradford Dillman, once depicted as stalwart heroes in Golden Age Hollywood, are downright detested... 

Especially after he and his COMPULSION co-star E.G. Marshall send the reluctant Segal, Gazarra and their ragtag group (including Bo Hopkins, Matt Clark, Frank Webb, Robert Logan and Steve Sandor) to not blow up a German bridge (opposite of many war-themed pot-boilers), but to keep the Germans from doing it themselves...

Steve Sandor, Frank Webb, Matt Clark and Bo Hopkins in The Bridge At Remagen

As director Guillerman has two pictures going: one centered on this grungy group traipsing onto various locations, dealing with obstacles ranging from pretty girls to deadly snipers... and the other a bombastic, explosion-filled, loud and bustling big-screen spectacular...

And while visually impressive, these kind of deliberately offbeat anti-heroes (countered by equally troubled Germans Robert Vaughn and Hans Christian Blech) needed far more individual and collective character-development for that second-half titular mission (and individual fates) to really matter.

Steve Sandor, George Segal and Ben Gazarra in The Bridge at Remagen with Bradford Dillman

George Segal and Ben Gazarra in The Bridge at Remagen

Anna Gaël in THE BRIDGE AT REMAGEN

Sonja Ziemann in THE BRIDGE AT REMAGEN

Robert Logan in THE BRIDGE AT REMAGEN

Paul Prokop and Bradford Dillman in THE BRIDGE AT REMAGEN

Ben Gazarra in THE BRIDGE AT REMAGEN

George Segal in THE BRIDGE AT REMAGEN

Steve Sandor, Ben Gazzara, George Segal and Bo Hopkins in The Bridge At Remagen

Bradford Dillman and EG Marshall (from Compulsion) in The Bridge at Remagen

Ten years earlier with Bradford Dillman and EG Marshall in COMPULSION