The Railway Man (2014)

To me, this movie is perfection.

This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

Can the unforgivable be forgiven? What is the right attitude towards perpetrators and collaborators of crimes of war, genocide and torture? Does time really heal? Is revenge the right answer? Is forgiveness possible and who has the right to forgive? Such questions are often asked in the war and especially Holocaust literature and cinema. Answers differ, as they do in real life and history. The Railway Man, the strong dramatic film inspired by the true characters and life stories of Eric Lomax and Takesi Nagase, asks and tries to provide an answer in the historical context of the killing prisoner camps of British prisoners in Japanese occupied Indochina during WWII.For many of the survivors of genocides or atrocities the wars that inflicted their sufferance never end. This was for many decades the case of Eric Lomax (acted as a young man by Jeremy Irvine and by Colin Firth at his maturity). He surrounds himself with a wall of silence and has difficulties to adapt to life after the war. The late story of love in his life (the second marriage in his real biography) imposes on him the duty to come to terms - one way or another - with his past. He has a chance that his fellows (like officer Finlay acted by Stellan Skarsgård) would not have. This means meeting face to face his torturer and traveling back to the infamous Kwai river area where the allied prisoners who fell in the hands of the Japanese were held during the war. This type of prisoner - guardian (or torturer) encounter many years later can also be seen in various war and Holocaust books films. Eventually - and this also happened in real life in this case - reconciliation and forgiveness prevail over enmity and revenge, with the former enemies having the chance to look one into the eyes of the other. The balance between honor and dignity in time of war switches, as the guilt turns into remorse, and revenge into forgiveness. The auto-biographical book written by Eric Lomax was turned by the script in a dramatic and romantic story which succeeds to be true to the essence while omitting some of the details of the story (for example Eric's first marriage). Colin Firth achieves one of the best performances in his career, with very good support from Stellan Skarsgård and Nicole Kidman. Director Jonathan Teplitzky does a fine efficient job in telling the story in a fluent manner, with discretion and avoiding useless effects. The flashbacks from the war times are very well filmed and the period rendered in a very credible manner. Conflicts between nations include a myriad of personal conflicts and stories of lives broken by wars. Peace and reconciliation between nations can become true and lasting only when most of the suffering is overcome. This film describes one possible story. We may agree or not with the path taken by the heroes, but we need to acknowledge and respect the dignified way it is being told and made public - including in this movie.

WOW ! and tears that was my feeling after I completed this movie. Simply brilliant tale told so effectively through amazingly live characters. Acting and direction is top class. Flashback of war scenes without being too dramatic are so effective that they transport viewers back to those times in those particular places depicted in movie. It is not a large scale movie but it deserves higher ratings. Once you start seeing it, you will be involved so much that you will never want it to finish early.This movie shall be watched by all Cinema lovers. I am not a professional critic but this movie has a heart at it's right place and I become too emotional while writing this.Wars never did good to anyone accept external pride but souls have suffered a lot all over the globe. Humanity is winner all the way - Easier said than done.

I was just a young boy in England during WW2 and when you are young perils and worries don't affect you the same as an adult with family. One memory for me of those days happened to be after the war, when a couple moved into the house next to ours. The husband had been a prisoner on the Burma Railroad and he would sit at his window looking down the street for most of the day. Rarely would he venture out in his garden, and as a young fellow, playing outside and climbing walls etc. I can still see him sat at the window. My father an ex-army man made an acquaintance with the couple and one day asked the husband why he was at the window so much. "I'm just waiting" was all he would say. Now I'm getting on in years I think I understand more what he meant. I think he was waiting for closure, something that the 'Railway man' achieved in this movie. I wonder if my neighbour ever found it?.

It's always a pleasure to watch a really good, meaningful movie like this one, considering how many silly ones come out each year.The acting by Nicole Kidman and Colin Firth is perfect - better than some performances that year that were Oscar-nominated.It has intelligently-written dialogue and the cinematography is very good. The directing is spot on, there are no serious mistakes, shortcuts or flaws.This is a story that needed to be told, not just in a book or a in a low-budget made-for-TV film, but in a good movie like this one with talented actors like Kidman and Firth.