The Railway Man

The travails of dealing with severe post-traumatic stress lie at the center of this anguished British drama based on Eric Lomax's bestselling memoir. Living in Berwick-upon-Tweed in England, circa 1980, train enthusiast Eric Lomax (Colin Firth) is a former British Army officer—a signals engineer—still haunted by his excruciating experiences at a Japanese labor camp during WWII. Married to an empathetic nurse (Nicole Kidman) he met on a train to Scotland, Lomax discovers that Nagase (Hiroyuki Sanada), the Japanese soldier who brutally tortured and tormented him, is now working as a tour guide at the Kempeitai internment camp, which has become a war museum. This revelation stirs vivid memories of being captured in Singapore in 1942, and how the young Lomax (Jeremy Irvine) and his fellow prisoners became slave laborers—forced to build Bridge 277 on the Burma-Siam Railroad (nicknamed the “death railway”), an incident that later inspired The Bridge on the River Kwai. Young Imperial Army translator Nagase (Tanroh Ishida) was a sadist, relentlessly beating the emaciated Lomax and subjecting him to a forerunner of waterboarding after Lomax built a contraband radio to listen to the BBC. Intending to wreak long-suppressed, murderous revenge, the elderly Lomax visits the museum, reveals his identity, and proceeds to confront and interrogate Nagase, who doesn't think of himself as a war criminal. Too cautiously directed by Jonathan Teplitzky, the film's dramatic effectiveness is hampered by a lack of suspenseful structure and a starchy reticence, although Firth nicely captures Lomax's calibrated emotional repression. Optional. [Note: DVD/Blu-ray extras include audio commentary by director Jonathan Teplitzky and co-writer/producer Andy Paterson, a “making-of” featurette hosted by journalist Lisa Ling (26 min.), and trailers. Exclusive to the Blu-ray release is a bonus UltraViolet copy of the film. Bottom line: a solid extras package for a too-reserved drama.] (S. Granger)