The Railway ManMovies like The Railway Man
- Key Features:
- World War II, Post-traumatic stress, Torture, Redemption, Forgiveness, Historical drama, Revenge, Survival, True story, British, Betrayal, Guilt, Confrontation
- Tone:
- serious, dramatic, restrained
- Target Audience:
- History buffs, Drama enthusiasts, War movie fans, Redemption stories
- Emotional Arc:
- Trauma → Vengeance → Reconciliation
The Railway Man

A victim from World War II's "Death Railway" sets out to find those responsible for his torture. A true story.
The Railway Man
Based on a real-life story, this drama focuses on a small group of Allied soldiers in Burma who are held captive by the Japanese. Capt. Ernest Gordon, Lt. Jim Reardon and Maj. Ian Campbell are among the military officers kept imprisoned and routinely beaten and deprived of food. While Campbell wants to rebel and attempt an escape, Gordon tries to take a more stoic approach, an attitude that proves to be surprisingly resonant.

Follow a group of children who are evacuated to a Yorkshire village during the Second World War, where they encounter a young soldier who, like them, is far away from home.

Train operator Andrea Marcocci has to witness the suicide of a desperate man who jumps in front of his train. Under the influence of this shock he starts making mistakes. A check up by a doctor reveals that he's at the brink of becoming an alcoholic. Due to this evaluation he is degraded and must accept a salary cut.

After the liberation of Auschwitz, an Italian prisoner of War begins a torturous voyage home to Turin, through a Europe caught between war and peace.

British RAF Wing Commander James Wright is captured by the Japanese during WWII and forced to fight in brutal hand-to-hand combat. The Japanese soldiers get more than they bargained for when Wright’s years of martial arts training in Hong Kong prove him to be a formidable opponent.

In the aftermath of World War II, a British colonel and his wife are assigned to live in Hamburg during the post-war reconstruction, but tensions arise with the German widower who lives with them.

As the Allied forces approach Paris in August 1944, German Colonel Von Waldheim is desperate to take all of France's greatest paintings to Germany. He manages to secure a train to transport the valuable art works even as the chaos of retreat descends upon them. The French resistance however wants to stop them from stealing their national treasures but have received orders from London that they are not to be destroyed. The station master, Labiche, is tasked with scheduling the train and making it all happen smoothly but he is also part of a dwindling group of resistance fighters tasked with preventing the theft. He and others stage an elaborate ruse to keep the train from ever leaving French territory.

A small band of multicultural convicts stages a daring escape from a WWII-era Siberian gulag, and embarks on a treacherous journey across five countries in a desperate race for freedom and survival.

A switchman at a seaside railway witnesses a murder but does not report it after he finds a suitcase full of money at the scene of the crime.

A German woman on a ship returning to Europe notices a face of another woman which brings recollections from the past. She tells her husband that she had been an overseer in Auschwitz during the war, but she has actually saved a woman's life.

A deadly collision between a train and car lead to an unlikely bond between the train engineer and a young boy who escapes the carnage.

With the aid of a fellow Auschwitz survivor and a hand-written letter, an elderly man with dementia goes in search of the person responsible for the death of his family.

A businessman, on his daily commute home, gets unwittingly caught up in a criminal conspiracy that threatens not only his life but the lives of those around him.

A soldier returns to his small town and exacts a deadly revenge on the thugs who tormented his disabled brother while he was away.

A hardened mercenary in the Foreign Legion begins to find his own humanity when confronted with atrocities during the fighting in Bosnia.

A man has only three and a half days and limited resources to discover why he was imprisoned in a nondescript room for 20 years without any explanation.

In the 1930s, Count Almásy is a Hungarian map maker employed by the Royal Geographical Society to chart the vast expanses of the Sahara Desert along with several other prominent explorers. As World War II unfolds, Almásy enters into a world of love, betrayal, and politics.

The story of a group of men, an Army Rifle company called C-for-Charlie, who change, suffer, and ultimately make essential discoveries about themselves during the fierce World War II battle of Guadalcanal. It follows their journey, from the surprise of an unopposed landing, through the bloody and exhausting battles that follow, to the ultimate departure of those who survived.

Following his release from a brutal stretch in prison for crimes he didn't commit, Mo is struggling to adapt to life on the outside. When his world collides with Doris, a mysterious woman with a violent past, he decides to risk his newfound freedom to keep her in his life.

When a renegade Russian general sends a nuclear bomb hurtling toward the Middle East aboard a hijacked train, special agents are dispatched to disarm the deadly device. Ten tons of steel and one ounce of hot plutonium are now riding roughshod through Europe. With time running out, the agents launch a desperate, bullet-packed assault on a deadly moving target piloted by a cold-blooded mercenary.

After again attempting to commit murder, a Jewish man with a mysterious past and extraordinary intelligence, charisma, and body control returns to an insane asylum, where he makes a startling discovery.

The story of Joseph, a man plagued by violence and a rage that is driving him to self-destruction. As Joseph's life spirals into turmoil a chance of redemption appears in the form of Hannah, a Christian charity shop worker. Their relationship develops to reveal that Hannah is hiding a secret of her own with devastating results on both of their lives.

On the brink of the First World War, Albert's beloved horse Joey is sold to the Cavalry by his father. Against the backdrop of the Great War, Joey begins an odyssey full of danger, joy, and sorrow, and he transforms everyone he meets along the way. Meanwhile, Albert, unable to forget his equine friend, searches the battlefields of France to find Joey and bring him home.

A WWII veteran escapes his care home in Northern Ireland and embarks on an arduous but inspirational journey to France to attend the 75th anniversary of the D-Day landings, finding the courage to face the ghosts of his past.

A Texan traveling across the wild West bringing the news of the world to local townspeople, agrees to help rescue a young girl who was kidnapped.

A soldier and member of the Dutch resistance investigates stolen art in the wake of the Second World War, including a Vermeer sold to the Nazis by a flamboyant forger.

In South Yorkshire, a small group of railway maintenance men discover that because of privatization, their lives will never be the same. When the trusty British Rail sign is replaced by one reading East Midland Infrastructure, it is clear that there will be the inevitable winners and losers as downsizing and efficiency become the new buzzwords.

A hardened convict and a younger prisoner escape from a brutal prison in the middle of winter only to find themselves on an out-of-control train with a female railway worker while being pursued by the vengeful head of security.

Pil-ju, an Alzheimer's patient in his 80s, who lost all his family during the Japanese colonial era, and devotes his lifelong revenge before his memories disappear, and a young man in his 20s who helps him.

Harry Haft is a boxer who fought fellow prisoners in the concentration camps to survive. Haunted by the memories and his guilt, he attempts to use high-profile fights against boxing legends like Rocky Marciano as a way to find his first love again.

A retired assassin's past catches up with him and his brutality surfaces as he goes on a final killing spree to make things right.

After being imprisoned by the Assad regime in Syria, Hamid now works undercover as part of a secret group pursuing their leaders, including the guard he suspects was responsible for his torture.

A falsely accused nobleman survives years of slavery to take vengeance on his best friend who betrayed him.

The true story of how businessman Oskar Schindler saved over a thousand Jewish lives from the Nazis while they worked as slaves in his factory during World War II.

A boxer suffers a serious head injury during a fight, and must deal with the consequences.

Allied prisoners of various nationalities pool their resources to plan numerous escapes from an "escape-proof" German P.O.W. camp housed in a Medieval castle.

A captured French Resistance fighter during World War II engineers a daunting escape from prison.

An ambitious young journalist uncovers the horrific slaughter of 22,000 Polish officers during World War II, a secret kept hidden for far too many years.

After being discredited as a coward, a 19th century seaman lives for only one purpose: to redeem himself. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in partnership with Sony Pictures Entertainment in 2000.

The action takes place shortly after the end of the Second World War in the Siberian hinterland, among Russians and Germans with damaged personal stories and a strange transformation: the victors seem to be crawling into the skins of the defeated, and vice versa. Ignat, is the embodiment of the larger-than-life image of the Soviet victorious warrior who, in fact, proves to be shell-shocked, sick and broken, although not completely destroyed. Trains become fetish for the heroes of the film, and speed becomes a mania; they virtually become one with their steam engines, while the machines take on human names. The heroes set up an almost fatal race in the Siberian forest, risking their own lives and those of others.

Freed after a lengthy term in a juvenile detention center, convicted child killer Jack Burridge finds work as a deliveryman and begins dating co-worker Michelle. While out on the road one day, Jack notices a distressed child, and, after reuniting the girl with her family, becomes a local celebrity. But when a local newspaper unearths his past, Jack must cope with the anger of citizens who fear for the safety of their children.

Heading east to Fort Worth to hire a schoolteacher for his frontier town home, Link Jones is stranded with singer Billie Ellis and gambler Sam Beasley when their train is held up. For shelter, Jones leads them to his nearby former home, where he was brought up an outlaw. Finding the gang still living in the shack, Jones pretends to be ready to return to a life crime.

Set in the South just after the US Civil War, Laurel Sommersby is just managing to work the farm without her husband, believed killed in battle. By all accounts, Jack Sommersby was not a pleasant man, thus when he suddenly returns, Laurel has mixed emotions. It appears that Jack has changed a great deal, leading some people to believe that this is not actually Jack but an imposter. Laurel herself is unsure, but willing to take the man into her home, and perhaps later into her heart.

Nicholas Nickleby, a young boy in search of a better life, struggles to save his family and friends from the abusive exploitation of his coldheartedly grasping uncle.

At the dawn of the 20th century, following their father's arrest on suspicion of betraying state secrets, the three Waterbury children—Bobbie, Phyllis and Peter—move with their mother to Yorkshire, where they find themselves involved in unexpected dramas along the railway by their new home.

Released from prison with terminal cancer, Max tries to reconnect with his estranged daughter and the grandson he’s never known. When his daughter’s abusive, drug-addicted ex-husband reappears, Max’s violent past comes back to haunt them all.

A tender drama unfolds between a grieving father and a troubled teenage girl as they drive northbound along the quiet outback roads of Australia. What she doesn't know is that between stops, he is leaving behind a bloody trail of bodies in a revenge motivated killing spree.

Two people, a Frenchman and a Jewish German woman, meet on a train while escaping the German army entering France.

Three American brothers who have not spoken to each other in a year set off on a train voyage across India with a plan to find themselves and bond with each other -- to become brothers again like they used to be. Their "spiritual quest", however, veers rapidly off-course (due to events involving over-the-counter pain killers, Indian cough syrup, and pepper spray).

In World War II London, nine-year-old George is evacuated to the countryside by his mother, Rita, to escape the bombings. Defiant and determined to return to his family, George embarks on an epic, perilous journey back home as Rita searches for him.

Zamperini returns to California where he wound up marrying Cynthia Applewhite while wrestling with untreated PTSD, suffering constant nightmares, angry, bitter and deeply depressed, his wife convinces Zamperini to attend the 1949 Billy Graham Crusade.

In a future where a failed global-warming experiment kills off most life on the planet, a class system evolves aboard the Snowpiercer; a train that travels around the globe via a perpetual-motion engine.

A Vietnam veteran, Charles Rane, returns home after years in a POW camp and is treated as a hero. He has a hard time adjusting, and things go badly. A movie about the walking dead, before that meant just flesh-eating zombies.

A woman's carefully constructed life is upended when an unwelcome shadow from her past returns, forcing her to confront the monster she's evaded for two decades.

Will Graham is a former London crime boss who has left his former life to live as a recluse in the forest. Haunted by the blood of those he has murdered, Will wishes never to return. But when his brother commits suicide following a sexual assault at the hands of a volatile car dealer, Will returns to London to discover the cause of his brother's death and administer justice to those responsible.

A young and cynical female journalist learns love may transcend trials and time as she discovers a story that will change her life forever. When war separates lovers on their wedding anniversary Feb. 14, 1944 at LA Union Train Station, Navy pilot Neil Thomas makes a promise he isn't sure he can keep - to return to the train station safe by their next anniversary. For sixty years Caroline Thomas keeps her promise by waiting at the train station until her missing in action husband can finally keep his with the "lost valentine." The message and meaning shows romance and love can be real; worth fighting, and maybe even dying for.

A dwindling group of German soldiers battle to return to their lines on the harsh Eastern Front.

After 20 years abroad, Mark Renton returns to Scotland and reunites with his old friends Sick Boy, Spud and Begbie.

As World War II rages, the elite Sixth Ranger Battalion is given a mission of heroic proportions: push 30 miles behind enemy lines and liberate over 500 American prisoners of war.

After serving a 12-year sentence for killing the man that slept with his wife, a man ponders whether he should try and reconcile with his family, or take revenge on those who turned him in.

Set in the dark and old Parramatta prison built by the original convicts our lead character Ray a war veteran finds himself serving 18 months for manslaughter after defending his fiance. He soon realizes that the prison boss has it in for him and does everything possible to break Ray even going after his fiance.

A true-story account of a German businessman who saved more than 200,000 Chinese during the Nanjing massacre in 1937-38.

A woman wakes up every day, remembering nothing as a result of a traumatic accident in her past. One day, new terrifying truths emerge that force her to question everyone around her.

When Col. William McNamara is stripped of his freedom in a German POW camp, he's determined to keep on fighting even from behind enemy lines. Enlisting the help of a young lieutenant in a brilliant plot against his captors, McNamara risks everything on a mission to free his men and change the outcome of the war.

An upper-middle-class couple's life is destroyed when their only child is kidnapped and killed. Obsessed with revenge, the couple seizes an opportunity to kidnap the killer.

A former bank robber is released after 10 years in prison. He gets help from a social-worker, but gets harassed by an old cop from his past.

The classic story of English POWs in Burma forced to build a bridge to aid the war effort of their Japanese captors. British and American intelligence officers conspire to blow up the structure, but Col. Nicholson, the commander who supervised the bridge's construction, has acquired a sense of pride in his creation and tries to foil their plans.

The true story of William Wilberforce and his courageous quest to end the British slave trade. Along the way, Wilberforce meets intense opposition, but his minister urges him to see the cause through.

In late 1940s Italy, a mother makes the difficult decision to send her son to the north, where he catches glimpses of a new life away from poverty.

During World War II, a young man is called up and, with an increasing sense of foreboding, undertakes his army training ready for D-Day, June 6th, 1944.

In New York City, a crime lord's right-hand man is seduced by a woman seeking retribution.

A Victorian surgeon rescues a heavily disfigured man being mistreated by his "owner" as a side-show freak. Behind his monstrous façade, there is revealed a person of great intelligence and sensitivity. Based on the true story of Joseph Merrick (called John Merrick in the film), a severely deformed man in 19th century London.

A returning war veteran, stricken with PTSD, gets trapped with his teenage sister on Boston's Tobin Memorial Bridge when a heavily armed group of ex-military revolutionaries take everyone hostage.

On the outskirts of the Civil War, a boy is sent north by a bounty hunter gang to retrieve a wanted man.

During the bloody war in Chechnya, a British couple and two Russian soldiers are taken hostage by Chechen rebels. Two of the hostages are then released to bring the money for the British woman who is forced to wait for the ransom.

While participating in a rehabilitation program training wild mustangs, a convict at first struggles to connect with the horses and his fellow inmates, but he learns to confront his violent past as he soothes an especially feisty horse.

The wife of a photojournalist sets out to discover why he came home from a recent assignment without his colleague.

Freddie, a volatile, heavy-drinking veteran who suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder, finds some semblance of a family when he stumbles onto the ship of Lancaster Dodd, the charismatic leader of a new "religion" he forms after World War II.

The story of a husband who suspects his wife of adultery, and sets out to track down the other man in her life.

A group of English, American, Dutch and Australian women creates a vocal orchestra while being imprisoned in a Japanese POW camp on Sumatra during World War II.

In the last days of the Nazi-occupied France, writer Marguerite Duras awaits the return of her husband, Robert Antelme, arrested for being a Resistance fighter and then deported, while she maintains a tense relationship with her ambiguous lover and a dangerous game with a French collaborationist. Even when the Liberation arrives, she must still endure the unbearable pain of waiting.

Heroin addict Mark Renton stumbles through bad ideas and sobriety attempts with his unreliable friends --Sick Boy, Begbie, Spud and Tommy. He also has an underage girlfriend, Diane, along for the ride. After cleaning up and moving from Edinburgh to London, Mark finds he can't escape the life he left behind as Begbie and Sick Boy come knocking.

The true story of the Mauritanian Mohamedou Ould Slahi, who was held at the U.S military's Guantanamo Bay detention center without charges for over a decade and sought help from a defense attorney for his release.

After the end of Apartheid, Archbishop Desmond Tutu meets with a brutal murderer seeking redemption.

During the Iraq War, a Sergeant recently assigned to an army bomb squad is put at odds with his squad mates due to his maverick way of handling his work.

The story of the pioneering project to rehabilitate child survivors of the Holocaust on the shores of Lake Windermere.

Indochina, 1945. While the French are harassed by both the Japanese army and the Vietnamese rebels, private Robert Tassen, driven by the memory of a tragedy of which he is the only survivor, embarks on the search for the mysterious and cruel Võ Bình Yên, one of the leaders of the insurrection.

In France during World War II, a poor and illiterate man, Henri Fortin, is introduced to Victor Hugo's classic novel Les Misérables and begins to see parallels between the book and his own life.

A drama centered on the relationship between journalist Michael Finkel and Christian Longo, an FBI Most Wanted List murderer who for years lived outside the U.S. under Finkel's name.

A middle-aged man recalls his childhood growing up in and around London during World War II.

A Young soldier returning from Iraq goes on a high mountain adventure in a desolate place in Europe to forget his past, he will lear truth in a mysterious local legend discovering that reality can be sicker than nightmares.

When Singapore surrendered to the Japanese in 1942, the Allied POWs, mostly British but including a few Americans, were incarcerated in Changi prison. Among the American prisoners is Cpl. King, a wheeler-dealer who has managed to establish a pretty good life for himself in the camp. King soon forms a friendship with an upper-class British officer who is fascinated with King's enthusiastic approach to life.

Arindam, a matinee idol, is going by train to collect an acting award. On the train, he is confronted by Aditi, a journalist who somewhat unwillingly starts to take his interview. Arindam, won over by Aditi's naivete, starts to disclose his past, his fears and his secrets.

A woman is released from prison after serving a sentence for a violent crime and re-enters a society that refuses to forgive her past.

Imprisoned in the 1940s for the double murder of his wife and her lover, upstanding banker Andy Dufresne begins a new life at the Shawshank prison, where he puts his accounting skills to work for an amoral warden. During his long stretch in prison, Dufresne comes to be admired by the other inmates -- including an older prisoner named Red -- for his integrity and unquenchable sense of hope.

Unlucky assassin Ladybug is determined to do his job peacefully after one too many gigs gone off the rails. Fate, however, may have other plans, as Ladybug's latest mission puts him on a collision course with lethal adversaries from around the globe—all with connected, yet conflicting, objectives—on the world's fastest train.

The vice-minister of Foreign Affairs of Czechoslovakia, knowing he's being watched and followed, is one day arrested and put into solitary confinement.

In 1953, an innocent man named Christopher Emmanuel "Manny" Balestrero is arrested after being mistaken for an armed robber.

Markus returns home to care for his daughter when his wife dies in a tragic train accident. However, when a survivor of the wreck surfaces and claims foul play, Markus suspects his wife was murdered and embarks on a mission to find those responsible.
