For a movie starring Colin Firth, Nicole Kidman and Stellan Skarsgard, and based on a harrowing true story, “The Railway Man” hasn’t been garnering all that much buzz out of the Toronto International Film Festival (you can read our review here). Still, it’s a movie that is definitely going to be reaching theaters outside of the festival and as proof Lionsgate has released a new trailer for the film, full of gorgeous cinematography, emotionally manipulative music cues, and Firth writhing around on the floor. Can you say “blockbuster?”
Jonathan Teplitzky directed the film, which is based on a bestselling memoir by Eric Lomax. Firth plays Lomax, a man who was captured in Signapore and forced into a Japanese POW camp, where he was made to work on the Thai-Burma Railway. Kidman plays his wife, who wants to get to the bottom of her husband’s suffering and Skarsgard is a fellow survivor of the ordeal. Also, one of our favorite Japanese actors Hiroyuki Sanada plays one of the torturers who Firth catches up with.
And while the trailer is very compelling, full of lovely vistas and a whole lot of acting by Firth, Kidman and Skarsgard, by all accounts the movie is somewhat limp and hampered by a damningly clumsy structure that robs the story of much of its dramatic impact.
So far the movie will be making its debut in Australia in December, although a US release date has yet to be solidified (it’s blah reaction probably means it’s out of the Oscar running this year). Watch the trailer below and see if it stirs you.