Moving drama based on the WWII experiences of Eric Lomax a Prisoner of War forced to work on a railway in Burma following the fall of Singapore to the Japanese.Lomax is played in two time-lines by Jeremy Irvine in the war and Colin Firth in his older years.He and his colleagues endure severe torture at the hands of their Japanese soldier captors forcing severe post traumatic stress disorder long after the war has ended.Lomax is a railway geek hence the title of the film. His demons come back to haunt him once he finds love with Patti (a rather boring Nicole Kidman) and the identity of one of his torturers is revealed as still being alive by wartime friend Finlay (Swedish Stellan Skarsgard). After travelling back to the site of his capture he finds forgiveness to the Japanese 'translator' soldier.The story is very interesting and emotional but the trouble with Colin Firth films I find is he plays pretty much the same character in all of them. A broody stiff upper lip Englishman. The film has a documentary feel like an episode of Michael Portillos Railway Journeys but on the whole provides a worthy film to watch.

I love WW2 movies. I really like Colin Firth. I'm not entirely a huge fan of Kidman, but she's okay. ( not that I think she acts terrible, but always seems to just over do it, rather. Except in 'The Other's..' she was great in that...) I don't know what it is exactly, but for how terrible the suffering this young man was supposed to endure through his ordeal as a POW, it just almost came across a bit cheesy on this film. Like a Lifetime TV movie. Not that I enjoy watching blood , guts and gore, or the misfortune of others. It's just usually with this type of film, I feel a sense of misery, or anger, or foreboding or SOMETHING with the situation within the story. This film just didn't have that affect on me. I felt nothing, but a bit bored. Right from the beginning. For this type of story, I just felt it was executed poorly. The story itself is good and of course the acting is as good as one would expect from the choices. It just didn't have the WOW factors that make my heart race with trepidation or elation. It will not be a movie that will stick with me. I'm being nice and giving it a 6...

In 1980, Eric (Colin Firth), traumatized WWII Pacific theatre veteran (and "railway enthusiast"—not "trainspotter") meets, (on a train, of course), long-time nurse Patti (Nicole Kidman). They converse, he about trains, she cattily about her intended travels. Within a few frames, they're married, and she finds out (oh!) that he's haunted by recollections. She can't get to him, so she talks to his wartime fellow prisoner, Finlay (Stellan Skarsgard). Finlay says she should keep to herself, but resolves to do something. Eric returns to the scene of the crime and meets his torturer. Back in England later, he gets a letter from his torturer, and decides to revisit the place, this time with Patti.This is a curiously bloodless film, in the sense of emotionlessness. One could not say that any of the acting performances are poor—Jeremy Irvine, as the young Eric (Firth) is plummily and not entirely annoyingly unwatchable. On a relatively small 18m budget, many scenes and locations are well brought to life. (Truly endless consortiums of taxpayer-funded state and national governments contributed to this film, so if you see this film, no matter how, you paid for it, big time, and the stars and the Weinstein Company got YOUR money, and no lawyer, no matter how expensive, could pretend otherwise.) But the film made back only maybe a quarter, at best, of its expenditure (wonder who got it?). Despite its gold-plated cast, its focus on war and romance and those bankable stars and those nasty enemies (in this case, the Japanese) why?Solipsism, indulgence, and mutual self-admiration. And maybe a story waiting too long to be told.The film is hobbled hopelessly by trying to pack too much in to too short a space. When you consider that this film is about lifelong and never-leaving trauma, the director's decisions to chop it up so close so that so many events happen so quickly over the course of a short-ish film (I saw the American cut), it kind of gives the lie to their noble views about making an important film about a forgotten event that just had to be known about. A bit like saying, "sure it's torture, but you'll get over it"—which is the obverse of the film's lofty purports.Maybe having to get so much public funding—i.e., yours and mine—so that the private sector would at last chip in, took some time. The long gestation and many false starts—these must have contributed to what the film became. Initial enthusiasm can wane and get diluted (or, yes, reanimated sometimes, though not in this case) across time. Who can dislike an economical film? But if you've got the stars, and heaven knows an endless script, let them work with it.Firth openly suggested Kidman, and Irvine, and, who's to say, possibly the international accountants who swung the deal.In the "bonus" material, narrated by the oddly off-pitch and off-styled Lisa Ling, each of the stars engage in talking about just how amazing it was to work with each other. In the commentary with director Jonathan Teplitzky and co-writer/producer Andy Paterson, both emote and slaver over just how amazing each of the scenes were, and just how amazing each of the actors were in being with each other. It only takes a little while of this before your stomach creeps up, and you can't help but think of what this film was supposed to be about, and how this story—any story, got hijacked by self-promoters and moral relativists.Surely this was a story that ought to have been told. But maybe, as for those actually involved, it just had to be gotten over, chalked up to life's enduring inhumanity.The real-life protagonist of the film, Eric Lomax, died shortly before it was released. In the extras, the filmmakers suggest that this was just as well, and as Eric wanted it, and it would have been too much for him to revisit the trauma (rather playing against their own chuffed-up self-imagined achievements).As a war story, this film fails. As a romance, it also fails. As an inward-looking self-congratulatory reel that sucked in public money to make quite a few rich people richer, well, that worked.

I seem to watch quite a few biopics these days and the railway man is another and I liked this film. The premise of this film sees a man who has PTSD over torturous events that happened to him. He now has a chance to get redemption for those events when he finds out the man responsible is still alive. Colin firth is fantastic in this film. I've never seen him deliver such a damaged performance that you really feel. It was a big power performance that should have got more recognition. I thought the younger actor in the flashbacks did a decent job in encapsulating firths younger self. Nicole Kidman is a good actress and she was really good as firths wife in this film. She bought her character and their relationship because of her powerful performance. Stellan skarsgard is really good in his role in the film as firths colleague and he added allot to the film. The Japanese soldier was really good in this film too and even though you hated his character you felt an element of sympathy for his character. The present day story was really interesting seeing this truly damaged character trying to get his redemption. However, I felt the flashback scenes didn't add enough to the narrative to the film. The script had some decent dramatic dialogue because this is a powerful film but if definitely could have used more humour. The style was alright with a fantastic score and a unique backdrop. However, the pacing is off in this film, the first hour is just too slow and it hurts the film overall. Overall this is a good film that is worth a watch.