Based on a true story from a less-told chapter in World War II history… Eric Lomax (Colin Firth) relives painful nightmares of his imprisonment and torture with the Imperial Japanese army.
Its 1780 when the film opens at a railroad station….a first class train ride where ‘railway enthusiast’ Eric Lomax comes upon a woman (Nicole Kidman) who will eventually become his wife. And she’ll also become immune to enduring years of Eric’s P.O.W. suffering and outbursts. From her perspective…the man she fell in love with is not the man that he really is. Instead he’s still at war…with himself.
What could be told as a fluid journey is instead choppy and disjointed, putting us in the back story (Singapore 1742) of a young actor (Jeremy Levine, War Horse) playing young Firth which in turns causes us to lose the tale’s rhythm and the immersing of the love story between the spouses. Why not cast Firth to play young Firth with [colored] brown hair and crow’s-feet-free lighting?
While the movie at times feels endless, there is something in our voyeuristic view of what men of a certain generation had to endure during war. It’s a delicate story with a dark corner into a solitary-confined cell. Every veteran in the aftermath might respond differently, yet they would universally pine for closure. But karma might not be the bitch you expected. What if in Firth’s case, he is finally faced with the man (Hiroyuki Sanada) who water-boarded and beat him forty years later? The story’s last 15 minutes make for the entire movie. ♚ ♛ 1/2