From one station of life to the next

The Railway Man

Director: Jonathan Teplitzky

Writers: Frank Cottrell Boyce, Andy Paterson

Starring: Colin Firth, Nicole Kidman, Stellan Skarsgard

Runtime: 116 minutes

Certification: 15

It’s an unbelievably touching story of human survival, love, and forgiveness. Young Eric Lomax (Jeremy Irvine), a prisoner of war when the allies surrendered to the Japanese in Singapore during the Second World War, goes through gruelling times to say the least when enemy soldiers discover he’s been building a radio and drawing a map. Years after the eventual victory, Lomax (now Colin Firth) has a chance encounter with Patti (Nicole Kidman), who later goes on to become his wife. It’s only then the signs of post traumatic stress disorder come to surface, which spurs on Mrs Lomax to find some sort of closure for her long-suffering husband.

With the help from an old army friend (Stellan Skarsgard) Patti learns of the brutal torture and inhumane cruelty her husband was subjected to. And Kidman, playing a supporting part in the first half of the film or so, is quietly effective in showing warmth and compassion, which is also heartbreaking of sorts, as Patti struggles to improve her husband’s condition.

Flashbacks reveal the ordeal Lomax went through, something that is shown in a lot of beatings, screaming, and one scene of water-boarding, although you get the feeling that the film is holding a lot back when it comes to methods of torture.

But through excellent performances coming from both Firth and Irvine, there is an element of continuity that paints Lomax as one person rather than splitting him up into two separate characters to fit into the different timelines.

Less well executed is when Patti re-enters the picture towards the end. In a clumsy voiceover that attempts to finish off all the loose strands, Lomax credits his wife and their love as being an important influence of good in his life. The thing is, there hasn’t been a whole lot of Kidman to make that statement convincing.

The eventual reunion that takes place between Firth and his torturer Takashi Nagase (Hiroyuki Sanada) is a powerfully moving and equally tense sequence that will rightly get those tear-ducts overflowing.