The Railway Man

It's been a long time since I posted a movie review.  One of the reasons for that is, our recent movie/video watching has been dominated by Law & Order.  We've started at Season One, and we are working our through a season at a time.  We're now winding up season eight (of twenty) and though we've seen almost all of them at least once, we're enjoying them again.

Sometime before I filled my Netflix queue with L&O, I added The Railway Man,  Not because of the subject matter but because it co-starred Nicole Kidman.  When The Railway Man showed up Monday, I had forgotten adding it, and the jacket didn't include the cast members, so I had no clue why I'd added it.

Since we'd almost finished all the Law & Order episodes we had in the house, I suggested to Christina that we watch the "mystery movie," for a few minutes at least.  One hour and fifty-eight minutes later we stopped watching it, and I checked to see if I could still talk. Then I managed to say, "If it's alright with you, I'm going to write a blog about it..."

This is it.

The Railway Man is based on the book by Eric Lomax.  The full title of the book is The Railway Man: A POW's Searing Account of War, Brutality and Forgiveness.   A bonus for us was Hiroyuki Sanada, who we fell in love with at some point during our 40+ times watching The Last Samurai (He played the character Ujio).  Just in case Hiroyuki isn't a household name at your house, that's him on the right.

Here's all you need to know about the movie to make a viewing decision.  Colin Firth plays Eric Lomax, Nicole Kidman plays Eric's wife, Patti, and Hiroyuki Sanada plays Nagase.  All of the events happened.  All of the people depicted are real.  The message is timeless and summed up better in one line from the book than I could sum it up in 10,000 words, so I won't try.  Instead, I'll share Eric Lomax's line with you -

"Sometime the hating has to stop." 

If you agree, don't miss The Railway Man.