The Railway Man

Last week I saw American HUSTLE and couldn't understand why the critics have so raved about it. Yesterday I saw THE RAILWAY MAN and can't understand why the critics have been so dismissive. It's a tense story about one of the great horrors of World War Two. Based on a true story, it's also a tale of love and redemption, two of the cinema's (and literature's) greatest themes. And it serves up a vivid reminder that the Japanese of the 1940s were, like the Nazis, from a different generation, almost from a different race.

David Lean's BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI casts a huge shadow over this movie. THE RAILWAY MAN lacks the "majesty" of Lean's famous epic, but I suspect that Alex Guinness's performance would seem very theatrical by the standards of screen acting today. If anything, Colin Firth gives a slightly under-powered performance (and Nicole Kidman's part gives her too little to work with), but Jeremy Irvine is intensely believable as the wartime Lomax, geeky and quietly heroic. The horrors of the forced labour that built the railway and the relentless brutality of the Japanese soldiers are both vividly conveyed, and the ending manages to be poignant without trespassing into mawkishness.

This is a strange movie, grim but highly watchable. Arguably, it could have been tougher, more savage, but then it might be harder to sit through.