Review: The Railway Man

The Railway Man (SPOILERS)
Cert: 15 / 116 mins / Dir. Jonathan Teplitzky




It gives me no great pleasure to say that I wasn't really moved either way by The Railway Man. What should have been a thoroughly thought-provoking, if not harrowing, study of pride, post-traumatic stress disorder and forgiveness came over as a rather clunky melodrama (albeit with remarkably solid acting, somehow).

Despite the excellent, tense atmosphere the film creates, I wasn't really moved by the scenes of emotional breakdown in the first act, wasn't really horrified by those of torture in the second, and wasn't convinced by the reconciliation in the third; all of which is only exacerbated by the fact that this actually happened. The film doesn't get all War Horse about the moral issues at play, but it makes little attempt to paint grey areas either. I was expecting the story to convey the horrors of war, but instead only learned that Eric Lomax had a really shitty time of things after 1942 (which I knew before I went in, so…).

Maybe the film, being released strategically for awards-season, has just been paled by its competition in 2014? Or maybe choice lines of emphasised dialogue like "I am happy" and "I am sorry" sound like they should have been left at the first draft?

…then again, the audience around me seemed fairly engrossed, so maybe the problem with this film lies with this viewer.

Pretty much, yeah.



I didn't. You might.



Not for me, but hopefully for the folks who made it, yes.



The cinematography's nice, but you don't need to see it on a massive screen.



I won't.



Doubtful.



There ain't.

1) In 'the funeral scene', why do the surviving comrades all have Scottish accents? They didn't when they were prisoners.
2) Looking at the standard-issue 'comparison' photos over the final credits, Jeremy Irvine looks like the young Eric Lomax, and Colin Firth looks like the old Eric Lomax. And Eric Lomax looks like Eric Lomax. So why doesn't Jeremy Irvine look like Colin Firth*¹?

*¹ Even though Jeremy Irvine does a bloody good job of acting and sounding like Colin Firth, and underlining the fact that Colin Firth is really just acting and sounding like Colin Firth. #ColinFirth

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• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
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