Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
Cast: Colin Firth, Nicole Kidman, Jeremy Irvine, Stellan Skarsgård, Sam Reid, Hiroyuki Sanada, Tanroh Ishida, Marta Dusseldorp, Masa Yamaguchi, Keiichi Enomoto, James Fraser, Shoota Tanahashi, Akos Armont.
The Railway Man might face strong competition for the title of Best British film in 2014 but it won’t for the want of being an absolutely brilliant film with a cast that shines throughout and with the horrors of war not glossed over and forgotten. It is not a film to be taken lightly; it should be approached, just like the other film out this weekend, 12 Years A Slave, as not just a piece of cinema, to be sat through and then left discarded at the foot of the mind as other films get shown throughout the year, but as a piece of history, cinematic or otherwise.
The Railway Man is taken from the book by former Prisoner-of-War Eric Lomax and the demons he had to face, along with his wife, played by the gracious Nicole Kidman, over 35 years after the end of World War Two. The man whose love of trains and engineering may have seemed odd to his fellow survivors but whose story is harrowing, compelling and utterly tormenting but who in the end will see the light needed to be a better man.
To see Colin Firth play a man whose life is unravelling due to all he experienced after the fall of Singapore, to see him so close to the seed of his own destruction is to feel for the man playing the part and the many thousands of soldiers, on both sides, who were subjected to the systematic tearing apart of the one thing left anybody when all seems lost, that of hope.
Even though the film rightly has the ageless Colin Firth as its star, what comes through the narrative, incredibly capturing what prisoners of war went through at the hands of the Imperial Japanese Army during World War Two, is the burning anger and the quenching burst of hope that floods the entire film. With Jeremy Irvine shining brilliantly as the young Eric Lomax, brutally tortured to the point where you can’t help but turn your head away and the fantastic Hiroyuki Sanada and Tanroh Ishida portraying the Japanese soldier, turned contrite and humble tour guide Takashi Nagase, this film is one that should be shown in all schools as soon as possible. The lessons to be learned are paramount, war is insane, that soldiers should always be looked after the terrors of war and that forgiveness conquers in the end, to let go of hate is something we should all aspire to.
Prepare to have a box of tissues sat ready by your side the closer the film comes to its conclusion, this is not a natural ‘weepie’ but the message of hope, reconciliation and forgiveness triumphing of bitterness and hate, no matter the atrocity will prevail. Colin Firth has never been better and for a film with the complexity of what happens to the human spirit as well as the mind when thrown into the destruction of war, The Railway Man sends out all the right signals on how to conduct your life in the end.
Ian D. Hall