If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

Excellent adaptation.

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

Blistering performances.

The railway man was the only solution that television offered that evening next to stupid game shows or standard, boring action movies. The description was not very hope giving (to confront his former enemy from a japanese war camp) and we feared some horror-torture scenes. We were blown away, I admit it...it's an intense movie that shows how extreme traumas can impact a human being. The torture scenes were limited to the amount needed to show the horrors that people can do to each other, the focus was constantly more on the mental problems and questions on how to handle life with these traumas and to confront them. It shows how horrible people can to each other but also how beautiful. And that war does not end in the minds of people when the fighting stops.highly recommended

A movie on the depths of human behaviour, the limits of endurance, and on forgiveness. Good themes, but not well executed. The ending can be seen a mile off. It is made especially easy as the rest of the movie moves so slowly you have heaps of time to figure out where it is going.Pacing is also off. Moves incredibly slowly, then once the two protagonists meet, it rushes to a conclusion. Feels clumsy.Casting is...odd. Both the leading actors, Colin Firth and Hiroyuki Sanada, are too young for the characters they are playing, and look it. Stellan Skarsgard has far too much of an accent to pass off as an English/South African/whatever the hell he was supposed to be soldier.All put in good performances, but were badly miscast.Good performances too from Jeremy Irvine as the young Lomax and from Nicole Kidman.An okay, but not great, movie.

The Railway Man (2013)Is this the definition of a sleeper? Here's a movie that no one talked about, and yet it is one of the more interesting, beautiful, and well done movies I've seen lately. But then, I'm inclined to like movies with surprises, with complex plots, and with lots of compelling scenes that work just for their visual and tactile audacity. There is plenty for me to like here. Even the very first scenes, which open with the delicacy of David Lean's "Brief Encounter," could blossom into a movie of its own. But wake up! This is just the prelude to the nightmare. All the personal and historical twists and turns will keep you startled and saddened and then, in a believable wooosh, thrilled. Colin Firth is the one who lifts it all up a notch, bringing Nicole Kidman's strong performance in line, and adding the veritable excellence of Stellan Skarsgard. There are other layers (time periods) with strong acting as well, and all this interweaves past and present in a less than obvious way. By the end it makes sense, beautiful sense, and leaves you a bit shake, frankly (if you have been as absorbed as I was). I want to say no more. Part of the magic here is how it happens, how the sudden shifts take you by the arm and pull you into a new world. Watch this. A terrific movie.

In times of war as well as other times, things are done which some do not consider normal, and in their judgments all is not always right. I must give the actors a lot of credit because they filled the characters most adequately, a look here, a step there, in my opinion they each measured what and how they were going to do it to convey the correct thought, and that is one of the important steps in acting.The story was not only compelling for me, but it rivaled many I have seen unfold, and as the others had done, this one had many turning points.Rent, buy or whatever, this is a very good film, and worth the viewing, although, not quite for the faint of heart.