THE RAILWAY MAN MOVIE REVIEW CODE

Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian. The Motion Picture Association of America rating is R - restricted. The Catholic News Service classification is A-III - adults. The film contains graphic scenes of violence, including torture, and a suicide. Longing for revenge, Lomax decides to travel to the Far East to confront his tormentor.ĭespite its negative moral trajectory at this stage, in the end, “The Railway Man” offers an unexpected and powerful lesson fully in line with scriptural values. Lomax’s repeated beatings and torture are staged in graphic but historically accurate detail - they are certainly not a sight for the squeamish.Īt this point the plot takes a remarkable turn: The elder Lomax discovers that Nagase (now played by Hiroyuki Sanada) is alive, and working as a guide at the internment camp, which has been turned into a museum. To spare his comrades, Lomax steps forward to receive the punishment, overseen by Takeshi Nagase (Tanroh Ishida), a Japanese interpreter. Their joy is short-lived, however their captors discover the device. Broadcasts reveal that the Allies have turned the tide, which gives the prisoners hope. Determined to survive, and possibly escape, they secretly construct a radio. The younger Lomax (Jeremy Irvine) and Finlay (Sam Reid) are radio engineers when the surrender forces them into servitude.

THE RAILWAY MAN MOVIE REVIEW CODE

“I don’t believe in this code of silence you have.”Īs Finlay fills in the details, the story unfolds in flashback. But he refuses to discuss what happened in the internment camp.ĭesperate to help him, Patti seeks out Lomax’s friend and fellow POW Finlay (Stellan Skarsgard) for advice and insight. Patti can see he is shell-shocked, crippled by post-traumatic stress disorder. Lomax has terrifying nightmares, and his behavior is erratic, at times violent. Sparks fly (shades of 1945’s “Brief Encounter”), and they wed.īut the long shadow of war looms over their marriage. On one such trip, he sits opposite Patti (Nicole Kidman), a retired nurse. He whiles away the days taking rail journeys around the country. Lomax (Colin Firth) lives an unsettled, absent-minded existence in Scotland. “The Railway Man” begins three decades after the war. This is the same railroad featured in the fictional 1957 film “The Bridge Over the River Kwai.” Prisoners of war like Lomax were forced into slave labor to build the notorious Burma Railway, which became known as the “Death Railway” because of the thousands who perished during its construction. The stunning fall of that stronghold - the “Gibraltar of the East” - was, in Winston Churchill’s words, the “worst disaster” in British military history.

During World War II, Lomax was one of thousands of British-led Allied troops taken prisoner by Japanese forces following the latter’s 1942 capture of Singapore. NEW YORK (CNS) - Human cruelty takes its toll in “The Railway Man” (Weinstein), a searing account of a former prisoner of war who is unable to overcome the emotional trauma of his past.ĭirected by Jonathan Teplitsky (“Burning Man”), the movie is based on Eric Lomax’s 1995 autobiography of the same title.

The railway man movie review