The Railway Man is a few things: a war movie (mostly), a love story (nominally) and one of those myopic Liam Neeson-style revenge thrillers that seems to coalesce in a bloody catharsis between hero and villain.
This adaptation of a best-selling memoir by British Army POW Eric Lomax is the sort of the hybrid that we’d decry as head-shakingly implausible if it weren’t kinda, sorta true. That said, one imagines a truer version of this come-to-Jesus story exists somewhere outside the earnest contours of director Jonathan Teplitzy’s broad, grim prestige picture, which revels in repulsing and pleasing crowds with equal gusto but sidesteps the more ambiguous questions.
Colin Firth plays Lomax, a bookish train enthusiast some years after World War II. His obsession with railway routes and timetables would, today, probably put him somewhere on the functioning autism spectrum. Back then, it led him to a meet-somewhat-cute with Patti, a solo rider on a train from Southampton to Glasgow who is portrayed by Nicole Kidman with a librarian’s haircut, a ghostly pallor and very little to do as the film progresses (Kidman is fine in this movie, but anybody who had a walk-on role on an episode of Law & Order could probably play her part).
Patti tells Lomax in not too many words to shave off his moustache — it’s the only line in The Railway Man with a shred of humor. They marry, and then the troubles begin: unpaid pills, ghoulish sketches of war memories turning up among Lomax’s cluttered belongings, vivid flashbacks of Lomax being shackled and carted off like cattle following a ceasefire in Singapore in 1942, forced into building parts of the Burma Railway, and ultimately abused by Japanese soldiers.
Lomax is characteristic of a time when veterans didn’t talk about their experiences in the war, and the more his memories are internalized, the more his life and marriage collapse into an abyss of trauma and dissociation. Patti turns to Lomax’s best friend from the war (Stellan Skarsgaard) to help, and he comes up with a possible solution: confronting Nagase (Hiroyuki Sanada), the Japanese interpreter who was his chief abuser during his time as a POW.
The Railway Man is that rare R-rated film that earns its restricted label solely from violent content; apparently, cartoonish blood and gore is one thing, but this movie’s realistic depictions of torture are quite another. In fact, there is very little blood in The Railway Man, but its flashbacks will turn your stomach, in much the way the lashings and beatings of Twelve Years a Slave turned stomachs.
The war crimes reach their emotional apotheosis during a short but unshakeable depiction of waterboarding, which serves as a reminder that in our own country’s embrace of this time-tested “enhanced interrogation technique,” we’ve learned from the worst. The Railway Man can be challenging in recreations like this, and for much of its running time, it presents a thoughtful and grounded depiction of PTSD symptoms, realized onscreen through a haunted vacancy in Firth’s eyes.
It starts to lose me upon Lomax’s return to Thailand to challenge his attacker, who works as an English-language guide to a World War II memorial, forever reliving his shameful past. We’re expected to accept that Lomax, who for the lion’s share of this film has been a silent, quivering puddle, suddenly has all the words he needs to cut down his abuser with confidence, eloquence and snark — the king sheds his stutter overnight.
But beyond that, the movie becomes less of a visceral experience and more an unlikely parable, a teaching moment in which shame and trauma lead to healing and perhaps even forgiveness and redemption. Those who have served in any war may find the film therapeutic, but as a film critic, I can’t let it off easy.
The Railway Man is intended to be emotionally absorbing, with a two- or three-hanky climax, but I was too aware of being manipulated — by the score, by the performances and by the writing, which delineates and underlines what should be implicit and unspoken — to become fully engrossed.
True story or not, it’s hard to play along when you know you’re being played.
THE RAILWAY MAN. Director: Jonathan Teplitzky; Cast: Colin Firth, Jeremy Irvine, Sam Reid, Stellan Skarsgaard, Nicole Kidman, Hiroyuki Sanada, Tanroh Ishida; Distributor: Weinstein Group; Rating: R; Opens: Friday, April 25 in most area theaters.