Interested in a harrowing, terribly unsettling movie that is worth every second of your time?
See The Railway Man, starring Colin Firth, Jeremy Irvine, Hiroyuki Sanada, Nicole Kidman and Stellan Skarsgard.
This is another one of the movies from Harvey and Bob Weinstein of The Weinstein Company (who formerly operated as Miramax), which explores a gripping, important theme that would never be touched by the bigger guys – for which they should be applauded.
Colin Firth plays Eric Lomax, a British soldier, haunted by the treatment he received as a prisoner of war who was captured by the Japanese and forced to help build the Thai/Burma railway by especially brutal enemy soldiers…and how he ultimately faces his past.
Firth won an academy award for The King\’s Speech. He is even better in The Railway Man – his best performance of all, if you ask me.
Hiroyuki Sanada is absolutely brilliant, and tremendously moving, as Takeshi Nagase, the “translator” who helped to facilitate Lomax\’s torture, and who is overwhelmed with grief and remorse because of it.
Jeremy Irvine as the young Lomax, Nicole Kidman as his eventual wife and Stellan Skarsgard as his war comrade and friend, are all excellent as well.
You won\’t walk out of the theater smiling and humming the tunes. But you will be enriched for having seen The Railway Man, and will almost certainly find yourself thinking about its message afterwards.
Do yourself a favor and see this movie.
