The Railway Man

We have seen a plethora of films based on true stories, and I mean just recently. We've seen "Heaven is for Real", "Cesar Chavez", "The Monuments Men" and most recently "Walking with the Enemy", and these films cover only this year. When I saw my first trailer of "The Railway Man", I thought it might be good--certainly a great cast, but I had no idea how powerful this film was until I actually experienced it.

Eric Lomax (Colin Firth) was one of many thousands of Allied prisoners of war forced to work on the construction of the Thai/Burma railway during WWII. His experiences, after the secret radio he built to bring news and hope to his colleagues was discovered, was one of torture by the hands of the Japanese and a young Takeshi Nagase (Tanroh Ishida) being responsible for the torture. This left him traumatized and shut off from the world.
Years later he met a beautiful woman, Patti (Nicole Kidman), on a train, fell in love and subsequently married. Patti was determined to rid Eric of his demons, so after speaking with Eric's colleague as a POW, Finlay (Stellan Skarsgard) about their experiences during that time, it caused her to try to be more understanding of Eric's nightmarish past. Discovering that Nagase, who is now older (Hiroyuki Sanada)-- being the one that haunted her husband, was still alive, Patti faces a terrible decision. Should Eric be given a chance to confront his tormentor? Would she stand by him, whatever he did?

Others to round out the cast are Jeremy Irvine as younger Eric as POW in WWII, Sam Reid as younger Finlay as POW in WWII, Ewen Leslie as Capt. Thompson, Tom Hobbs as Thorlby, Tom Stokes as Withins, Michael MacKenzie as Sutton, Yutaka Izumihara as Japanese NCO, and Akos Armont as Jackson.

This was directed with severe clarity and intensity by Jonathan Teplitzky ("Better Than Sex" 2000, "Gettin' Square" '03, "Burning Man" '11). It was as though he dissected these characters to a point that was so delineated, one felt that these actors were the people they were portraying. It was written by Frank Cottrell Boyce and Andy Paterson based on the book by Eric Lomax. Firth as Eric was written as a character with a traumatized past, otherwise known today as PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder), something that we, unfortunately, didn't realize its full damage to an individual until the last few years. This disorder was written so well indicating the severity of this condition, that if you didn't know that Firth was an actor, one might think this person was actually experiencing this--of course, a lot of validity was from Firth's performance.

This could be a contender come Oscar time, because between the acting, writing and directing, not to mention the cinematography by Garry Phillips, acs, this film simply is entertaining, and shows power, forgiveness, redemption and grit all within the confines of less than a two hour running time.

Out of 4 Stars: 4                            Rated: R                            116mins.