colin firth nicole kidman the railway man

Being smart and clever, Lomax became a target of his sadistic Japanese captors, who are all depicted as one-dimensionally evil. There, he and the other soldiers were forced into slave labor, working on the Burma-Siam 'Death Railway,' as it became known. It’s not something he and the other veterans at the Officers Club, including his close friend and fellow ex-prisoner Finlay ( Stellan Skarsgard), ever talk about.įlashing back in time, Lomax (played by Jeremy Irvine as a younger man) recalls being taken into custody after the fall of Singapore in 1942. But on what should be the happiest day of his life, Lomax is haunted by nightmarish memories of the brutality he endured as a POW-a condition we now know as Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Individually lonely, alone and adrift, they fall in love and get married in no time. 'Don’t move,' Lomax says as Patti stands in his cramped kitchen on her first visit to his apartment. As they wind their way along the English and Scottish coast, he drops little tidbits about various train lines and trivia on the towns that blur past them. Both are in flux and clearly a little fragile. He’s an expert on trains-an 'enthusiast,' to use his word. In the annoying framing device that flashes back and forth in time far too frequently, we see Lomax and Patti meet cute on a train. But in no time, she’s relegated to serving as the teary-eyed wife, listening to what happened to her husband and whispering responses of shock and sadness. Kidman is kind of charming at first as she flirts with and falls for Firth. Lomax also finds some fleeting moments of tentative joy with the love of his life, whom he encounters in middle age: his wife, Patti, played by Nicole Kidman in an underwritten role. Throughout his career, Firth repeatedly has proven himself to be a master at steadily revealing his characters, and the way his Lomax eventually reclaims his identity before enjoying some redemption is gently stirring. What’s not surprising is the subtlety Colin Firth finds in playing Eric Lomax, whose autobiography inspired 'The Railway Man.' ( Frank Cottrell Boyce and Andy Paterson co-wrote the screenplay.) Playing Lomax as a shell of his former self decades after his imprisonment, Firth is both quietly distracted and fitfully tormented.

Colin firth nicole kidman the railway man