The film slowly unfolds through flashbacks as layer upon layer of a World War II veteran's repressed memories are stripped away. Review by Erik Samdahl unless otherwise indicated. Based on a true memoir of survival, love, retribution, and forgiveness, 'The Railway Man' sets off from Edinburgh at a leisurely pace. The movie's sometimes understated approach keeps it from being anything more than that, however. The Railway Man tells an interesting true story and is supported by a trio of good performances. The scenes between Firth and Hiroyuki Sanada, who plays his former captor Takeshi Nagase, are disappointing and feel overly melodramatic compared to the rest of the movie. The scenes amount to a lot of talking without much depth, opting for stodgy moments where Kidman, as Lomax's wife, attempts to dig deeper into her husband's psyche and Stellan Skarsgaard appears to advance the plot by telling us what happened to Lomax. The Railway Man accumulates some power and insight, but it’s also hard to shake the feeling that a complicated first-person account has been given the Weinstein. The weakest aspect of The Railway Man are the “modern day” scenes, which has Firth trying to come to terms with what happened to him. The movie boasts a tricky structure, but director Jonathan Teplitzky ('Burning Man') does an expert job of sewing together the World War II moments with sequences set in the 80s. Kidman is great but disappears for large periods of time. A former British Army officer, who was tortured as a prisoner of war at a Japanese labor camp during World War II, discovers that the man responsible for much of his treatment is still alive and sets out to confront him. Firth is good but understated, much like the film. Irvine is great in the flashbacks, but his role seems to exist primarily to demonstrate the terrible torture Lomax was subjected to. All three actors deliver strong performances, though none are standouts given the subject matter. Each individual segment of the movie is good but not amazing, and yet director Jonathan Teplitzky finds synergy in the combination of said pieces.įirth and Jeremy Irvine play the old and young Lomax respectively, while Kidman plays his wife. The movie succeeds largely thanks to the fascinating source material. Based on the autobiography of the same name by Eric Lomax, The Railway Man depicts extreme torture of British POWs and the psychological effects torture can have on men decades later. That’s the way it is with all but the most. The Railway Man is a well acted piece of film that most notably tells a shockingly brutal true story of torture and survival. If The Railway Man, like many films about combat, is reflexively antiwar, it unabashedly celebrates the nobility and courage of British soldiers. Nicole Kidman also stars, because why not. That's the message (well, not really) in The Railway Man, a drama about a former British Army officer who discovers that the man responsible for much of his brutal treatment in a Japanese prisoner camp during World War II is still alive. Eric Lomax is one of many British soldiers caught by Japanese forces and imprisoned in a labour camp during World War Two. Now available on Blu-ray and DVD ( Buy on Amazon)ĭon't mess with Colin Firth, because he will mess with you.
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