![]() However, the equation balances in the end, as the now-elderly Lomax confronts Nagase Takashi ( Hiroyuki Sanada, who looks nothing like younger actor Tanroh Ishida) and subjects him to a fraction of the same treatment. ![]() Upsetting as it sounds, everything unfolds entirely according to the parameters of good taste, as Terplitzky gradually reveals the degree of cruelty Lomax faced in captivity, shooting everything in polite period re-creations.ĭuring the first half of the film, Firth has it relatively easy, as Patti accepts Lomax’s suffering vicariously and Irvine’s younger version of the character acts out the full passion play of abuse: beaten, emaciated and still too proud to tell them anything but the truth. This treatment, which included being beaten with bamboo and waterboarding, would be enough to break anyone’s spirit, and sure enough, Lomax was never the same again - which explains why both he and Finlay are so incensed when the Japanese translator who participated in their torture resurfaces unpunished, finding work as a tour guide at the country’s Kempeitai War Museum in the ’80s. Caught with a contraband radio, Lomax had it worst of all, enduring incredible torture as the Japanese tried to force a confession. ![]() Concerned, Patti convinces one of their lot, Lomax’s best friend, Finlay ( Stellan Skarsgard), to explain what her husband refuses to discuss, which invites a long flashback in which we learn of the arduous conditions Lomax (played by “War Horse’s” Jeremy Irvine as a young man) and his fellow soldiers faced in the Japanese internment camps. It’s not until after the couple is married that she realizes how the nightmares still haunt him, while fantasies of revenge continue to dominate his waking thoughts.Īlthough Lomax belongs to a support group of sorts back home in Berwick-upon-Tweed, he and a dozen other survivors keep mum about their experience (this code of silence makes the fact that Lomax agreed to tell his story at all a rare thing among former Pacific-theater POWs). Patti can sense that there’s something not quite right about Lomax when they meet - a certain frazzled professorial quality that masks just how much trauma he’s still coping with as a result of his captivity. He worked as a signals engineer in the service and never lost his love of trains, despite being forced to build Thailand’s notorious “Death Railway” after being taken prisoner in Singapore, circa 1942. Lomax is a self-professed “railway enthusiast,” you see. ![]()
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