The Railway Man is a war drama that focuses on a former British officer who still faces the psychological trauma from his days in captivity decades after World War II. Eric Lomax’s second wife Patti eventually puts the pieces of the puzzle together and discovers his tragic past. Patti reaches out to Eric’s friend Finlay, and together, they convince him to face his former captor – who is still alive - in an attempt to find closure once and for all. This film is an adaptation of the bestselling autobiography by Lomax.
In his autobiography, Eric Lomax shares his gruesome experiences as a prisoner of war during WWII. Eric joined the Royal Corps of Signals at the age of 19 in 1939, right before the start of the war. In 1942, he was stationed as a lieutenant in Singapore when the Japanese took over the country, capturing him and many other Allied soldiers. As a prisoner of war, Eric was forced to march to Changi Prison, where the number of prisoners exceeded the maximum capacity of the prison. The prisoners were divided and sent to smaller camps, and Eric was sent to a camp in Thailand.
Along with many other prisoners, Eric was forced to build the Burma Railway, which ran from Bangkok, Thailand to Rangoon, Burma (now Myanmar). The conditions in which the prisoners were forced to work were horrific, and malnutrition and mistreatment were widespread. While he was working on the Death Railway, as it was known, Eric was subject to severe torture, which psychologically haunted him years and years after the war ended.
After the war ended, Eric returned to Britain and was awarded the Efficiency Medal, as well as receiving the honorary rank of captain before retiring in 1949 from the army. Eric found it difficult to adjust to civilian life due to the psychological damage that he suffered during his years of imprisonment, and he joined the Colonial Service and served in Ghana until 1955.
Later on, Eric sought treatment for his psychological trauma and traveled to Thailand to face one of his cruelest torturers, a Japanese interpreter named Takashi Nagase. Eric wanted to bring closure to his tragic past that continued to haunt him, and when he discovered that Takashi spent his life trying to make amends for his war actions, he found that closure he was looking for. Eric died in 2012 at the age of 93.