Recent from talks
Return from the River Kwai
Knowledge base stats:
Talk channels stats:
Members stats:
Return from the River Kwai
Return from the River Kwai is a 1989 British film directed by Andrew McLaglen and starring Edward Fox, Chris Penn and Timothy Bottoms.
It is not a sequel to The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), though it also deals with POWs of the Japanese in World War II.
The film is based on a 1979 factual book with the same name about a 1944 Japanese prisoner transport of 2,217 British and Australian POWs, who had been working as forced labour on the Burma Railway, building the bridge over the River Kwai. They were taken by railway to Singapore, and from there aboard two ships, Rakuyo Maru and Kachidoki Maru, destined for Japan. On 12 September 1944, both ships were torpedoed by US submarines, and 1,559 of the prisoners perished.
Film rights were bought by Karl Unger. In 1986 Tri-Star agreed to release in the US.
Unger said the film was not a sequel. "It is a story that stands completely on its own, and it is a factual story," he said. "The event is not known in America. It is known in the Pentagon, but not by the general public."
The words "river Kwai" were not mentioned in the film and the river only appeared at the beginning. The bulk of the story concerned what happened to the POWS after the railway was built.
The film was shot in 1988 in the Philippines. According to Unger, "Everyone said, `The Philippines? Are you crazy? They're throwing bombs over there. You can't make movies there'."
Unger did consider filming somewhere else but said he did not think he would have "gotten the kind of infrastructure we did here.... Eighty percent of what we needed was already here. We needed World War II ships, and the Philippine Navy is still using them. We needed a harbor that looks like Saigon in the 1940s. Manila Bay was perfect. We needed World War II planes, and the Philippine Air Force is still using Japanese Zeros as training planes." Unger added, "The other 20% we built ourselves, and we built our own studio in a warehouse in the suburbs.""
Hub AI
Return from the River Kwai AI simulator
(@Return from the River Kwai_simulator)
Return from the River Kwai
Return from the River Kwai is a 1989 British film directed by Andrew McLaglen and starring Edward Fox, Chris Penn and Timothy Bottoms.
It is not a sequel to The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), though it also deals with POWs of the Japanese in World War II.
The film is based on a 1979 factual book with the same name about a 1944 Japanese prisoner transport of 2,217 British and Australian POWs, who had been working as forced labour on the Burma Railway, building the bridge over the River Kwai. They were taken by railway to Singapore, and from there aboard two ships, Rakuyo Maru and Kachidoki Maru, destined for Japan. On 12 September 1944, both ships were torpedoed by US submarines, and 1,559 of the prisoners perished.
Film rights were bought by Karl Unger. In 1986 Tri-Star agreed to release in the US.
Unger said the film was not a sequel. "It is a story that stands completely on its own, and it is a factual story," he said. "The event is not known in America. It is known in the Pentagon, but not by the general public."
The words "river Kwai" were not mentioned in the film and the river only appeared at the beginning. The bulk of the story concerned what happened to the POWS after the railway was built.
The film was shot in 1988 in the Philippines. According to Unger, "Everyone said, `The Philippines? Are you crazy? They're throwing bombs over there. You can't make movies there'."
Unger did consider filming somewhere else but said he did not think he would have "gotten the kind of infrastructure we did here.... Eighty percent of what we needed was already here. We needed World War II ships, and the Philippine Navy is still using them. We needed a harbor that looks like Saigon in the 1940s. Manila Bay was perfect. We needed World War II planes, and the Philippine Air Force is still using Japanese Zeros as training planes." Unger added, "The other 20% we built ourselves, and we built our own studio in a warehouse in the suburbs.""