The Railway Man (DVD REVIEW)
The Railway Man
DVD
Review by Kam Williams
Headline:
True Tale about Brit POW Tortured during WWII Due on DVD
Eric Lomax
(Colin Firth) served as a signals officer in the British Army during World War
II. His unit was dispatched to the Pacific theater where it was captured by the
Japanese when Singapore
fell in 1942.
They soon
joined the 60,000+ POWs subsequently forced to build the Burma Railway
stretching from Bangkok to Rangoon. The Allies came to call the 258-mile
construction the Death Railway, because so many soldiers perished along the
way, including 6,318 of Lomax’s fellow Brits pressed into slave labor by their
barbaric captors.
Their
grueling ordeal has been brought to the big screen before, most notably in The
Bridge on the River Kwai, the Academy Award-winning classic starring Sir Alec
Guinness which swept the Oscars in 1958. That fictional adventure revolved
around the daring exploits of some heroic saboteurs in the face of overwhelming
odds.
By contrast,
The Railway Man is a relatively-introspective affair. This poignant character
study is based on Lomax’s moving memoir of the same name. And although he
survived the war, he remained mentally scarred long after his physical wounds
healed.
For, he had
been subjected to unspeakable torture ranging from brutal beatings to
waterboarding, especially at the direction of one particularly-sadistic
interrogator, Nagase Takeshi (Tanroh Ishida). Eric had aroused the suspicion of
the Japanese when he was caught with detailed drawings of sections of the
railroad on which he was working.
Truth be
told, he’d always been fascinated by trains while growing up in Edinburgh and had sketched
such maps throughout childhood. But since the frustrated Nagase still suspected
otherwise, the punishment only escalated.
Upon the
cessation of hostilities, Lomax returned home a broken man unable to readjust
to civilian life. Sure, he could commiserate with former platoon mates at the
veterans club, yet the memories of Burma nevertheless continued to
haunt him.
Directed by
Jonathan Teplitzky (Better than Sex), The Railway Man is a heartrending,
flashback flick set both during World War II and in 1980 which is when Lomax’s
loyal wife, Patti (Nicole Kidman), urges him to track down Nagase. Her hope is
that a meeting might help her traumatized husband exorcise his demons and
thereby recover from his severe psychological afflictions.
Eric’s
ensuing sojourn back to the Orient inexorably leads to a confrontation with the
tormentor whose face he’s never been able to erase from his mind over the
intervening decades. But the question is whether he’ll be able to resist the
desire for revenge in favor of reconciliation.
A
remarkable illustration of the human capacity to find peace through
forgiveness.
Excellent
(4 stars)
Rated R
for disturbing violence
Running time: 116
minutes
Distributor: Anchor Bay
/ The Weinstein Company
DVD Extras:
Interviews with cast members Colin Firth, Nicole Kidman, Jeremy Irvine,
Hiroyuki Sanada, Tanroh Ishida and Sam Reid, director Jonathan Teplitzky,
writer/producer Andy Paterson, and producers Chris Brown and Bill Curbishley.
To order a copy of The Railway Man on DVD, visit:
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