Book Review: The Railway Man (2013)

[James Marinero]

Title: The Railway Man (2013)

Tagline: Revenge is never a straight line.

Genre: Drama, History

Director: Jonathan Teplitzky

Cast: Colin Firth, Nicole Kidman, Stellan Skarsgård, Jeremy Irvine, Hiroyuki Sanada, Tanroh Ishida, Michael MacKenzie, Jeffrey Daunton, Tom Stokes, Bryan Probets, Tom Hobbs, Sam Reid, Akos Armont, Takato Kitamoto, Keith Fleming, Ben Aldridge, Yutaka Izumihara, Louis Toshio Okada, Micheal Doonan, Shoota Tanahshi, Peter Tuinstra, Shogo Tanikawa, Ben Warren, Yasuhiko Miyauchi, Keiichi Enomoto, Masa Yamaguchi, Ewen Leslie, Shinji Ikefuji, Jack McTaggart, Sarah McVicar, Therese Bradley, Byron J. Brochmann, Marta Dusseldorp, Charlie Ruedpokanon, Kate Rutter

Release: 2013-12-02

Runtime: 116

Plot: A victim from World War II's "Death Railway" sets out to find those responsible for his torture. A true story.

 

[James Marinero]

Now quite an old movie, this one had passed me by, like many others as I live on a boat. Not what what I expected from the Netflix blurb but an interesting true story about...well, that would be telling. 4/5.

 

[Steve C]

Just watched it as I have a special interest. I have lived in Thailand for the last 25 years and visited Kanchanaburi a few times and walked the railway. My uncle was a POW and worked in the camps as a doctor so he saw the terrible side of the treatment dished out. The surprising thing he mentioned was that there were 10 times as many locals press ganged into working on the railway as POWs and their death rate was 10 times as high so they must have had the worst of the treatment. If you visit the area there is a cemetery for the POWs but nothing to commemorate the nearly 100,000 Thais and Burmese who died. A case of history written by the victors I suppose.