8/10

Director Jonathan Tiplizky adapts the best selling autobiography about a British army officer who is tormented as a prisoner of war at a Japanese labor camp during World War 2. If there is one thing i learned while watching this film it’s that sometimes we are doomed to repeat the same history that scared us in the first place. Colin Firth stars as the British army officer 30 years after the Japanese army surrendered. He finds himself living with the… brutal memory of the torture he went through while taken captive. Firth gives another great performance. As Eric Lomax, we see the face of an emotionally scared man who has trouble getting past the events that have stayed with him for over three decades. The film takes the first half hour of the run time to explore the quick love at first site relationship between Lomax and his wife (played by Nicole Kidman). The love isn’t written out very detailed, but we definitely see how much the love reflects in both of their faces. I thought Kidman was the best part of this movie. It’s kind of a shame that she is such a big part of the film in the first half of the film, but left as just a typical side character in the second half. She stands by her husband no matter what she knows he has to do. Stellan Skarsgaard was also impacting as Lomax’s best friend and fellow soldier, Finlay. The conversations between he and Kidman are the best parts of the film. It’s seen in flashbacks from their conversations the kind of hell that Lomax went through. Besides great cast performances, this film has beautiful scenery in the shots of 1950’s Japan and 1980’s England. The transformations of the time periods are done very well, and really do well to give us that feel of entering a time machine between era’s. If i had one lone criticism for this film, it is that the trailer makes it too predictable. That isn’t necessarily a problem with the film, but you see the ending coming from a mile away, so you aren’t as on the edge of your seat as you could’ve been. Some people will find problem with the ending in the terms of it not being fully satisfying, but i think it’s just right. Closure is the top thing that we want for these characters, and i think they receive it all the same even if they have to take a different road to get there. If you can find it in theaters near you next weekend, i suggest you give this movie a look. It gives a true life account of what many soldiers called reality in this time period. With a lot of story to tell, the 110 minutes are well directed to give the viewer every kind of emotion while watching.