The movie begins in England in 1980 with a British officer named Eric Lomax.
Eric spends the afternoon at the Veterans Club, reading a book about trains.
His friend, Finlay, jokingly asks if he is looking at old railway timetables again.
Lomax tells Finlay and the others about how he sat across a beautiful woman called Patricia
Wallace on a train last Thursday.
They enjoyed each other's company during the train ride until he got off at his stop.
After recalling their encounter, he realizes he has fallen in love with the woman.
Finlay asks what he will do about it now, then Lomax rushes to the train station.
Remembering the places on her itinerary, he finds her leaving the train, greets her, telling
her that their encounter must've been a coincidence, and invites her to have dinner at his house.
The two of them eventually started dating and soon got married to the Veterans Club
as Lomax's entourage.
On their wedding night, while Patricia is in the bathroom, Japanese Officer Takashi
Nagase appears in their room and brings Lomax to take him back to a Japanese prisoner-of-war
camp.
When he sees the room where he is being brought, he protests, saying the war is over.
However, it was a hallucination.
Patricia finds him on the floor, yelling in agony as if he is actually experiencing the
pain from his memories.
During the Second World War, Young Lomax was a communication officer for the British Army.
On February 15, 1942, while he was based in Singapore, his superior officers informed
them that they were ordered to surrender to the Japanese and destroy everything.
Lomax manages to keep a few radio parts, and he and his fellow mates sneak them into their
clothes before they are captured.
The young Nagase was an interpreter between the British soldiers and the Japanese army.
They are ordered to go on the train to be transported to a POW camp on the Malay Peninsula.
After moving in together, Patricia starts to notice Eric's peculiar behavior.
Sometimes he spends a long time staring at the sea or the door at night.
He also removes Patricia's decorations that she had placed in the seating area after he
had claimed everything was great, then takes it back, saying he liked things better the
way they were.
Patricia wants to help him, but he won't discuss what is troubling him.
She finds a book of illustrations of the torture that he might have suffered in the POW camp.
She also finds an empty bedroom in the house with only a suitcase on the bed and Eric's
uniform in a wardrobe.
One day, when debt collectors visit their home, Eric remembers Nagase again, he grabs
a box cutter in defense, but in reality, he is attacking the men.
Soon realizing his actions, Eric hastily flees from the house, refusing to discuss the incident
with anyone.
Desperate to help her husband, Patricia decides to visit the Veterans Club.
She approaches Finlay to inquire about Eric's story, explaining that she used to be a nurse,
so she's seen the trauma that soldiers are suffering from.
Initially, Finlay believes that no one can truly understand the suffering they endured
and hesitates to share a tale that isn't his own.
However, when Patricia emphasizes that Eric isn't coping and needs to find relief from
his trauma, Finlay relents and agrees to tell her what happened to them after their capture.
The journey to the POW camp proves to be unbearable from the start.
They endure an arduous ride, packed tightly into a train car devoid of proper ventilation,
and to make matters worse, they are deprived of water throughout the journey.
Upon arrival, they are confronted with the distressing sight of captured soldiers subjected
to forced labor, facing brutal beatings for any act of disobedience.
While some are sent to dig, Eric and his fellow communicators, being engineers, are tasked
with repairing equipment instead.
Later that night, the group talked about escaping but faced the challenge of needing to know
their location or wilderness survival prospects.
Fortunately, Eric, with his extensive knowledge of local train tracks as a railway enthusiast,
drew a map.
Their four-day journey from Singapore to Bangkok made him realize that they were now tasked
with constructing the Thai-Burma Railway, a project the British had deemed impossible
without an entire army of slaves.
Young Finlay declares they are not slaves but soldiers and orders them to fix the radio.
While working for the Japanese, they would secretly take small pieces and hide them in
their clothes.
They were missing a crucial component, a capacitor, which had been taken by a fellow British soldier
working in the line.
They couldn't talk to him without the guards noticing, so the engineers created noise and
smoke while supposedly fixing one of the machines.
With the guards distracted, Eric approaches their friend to retrieve the final piece.
Later he pretends to admire the local landscape.
Eric learns the river's name, adding it to his map before hiding it in a urinal pipe.
While working on a truck, the engineers seize the opportunity to build a radio.
By hiding in the trunk, they connect their makeshift radio to the vehicle's battery and
make it functional.
Although it only receives signals, they hear encouraging news: Stalingrad has been retaken
by the Russians, the US Air Force has joined the fight, and Hitler is on the run.
They spread the news around the camp, keeping the hope of rescue alive.
One morning, Eric sees the Japanese assembling their soldiers.
He attempts to retrieve his map but gets caught in the act.
The soldiers gather the engineers and reveal that they have found the radio, prompting
them to start beating up Withins, one of the engineers, to make him confess.
Eric steps forward, surrendering himself, and takes the blame for the entire team.
He also endures a beating, resulting in both his arms broken.
His fellow soldiers do their best to fix him as much as possible.
However, after a week, Eric is eventually taken away.
About a week later, a member of the secret police called Kempeitai, accompanied by Nagase
as an interpreter, takes Eric away.
They tie his wrists to a motorbike and force him to run behind them.
After two weeks, Eric reappears, looking broken.
He keeps quiet about what happened to him, never sharing the details with the others.
Now that Patricia knows the story, she tries to support and console Eric during his traumatic
episodes.
Even when Patricia puts on some music on the radio, it triggers him, prompting him to leave
the house.
Later, she goes to Finlay to ask for his help, but he admits there's nothing he can do more
other than the meetings, which are already taking a toll on him anyway.
However, he found something he made but is hesitant to share.
It's a newspaper clipping that reveals Nagase's current occupation as a tourist guide at the
camp where they were once prisoners.
The camp has now been transformed into a museum.
Finlay still determines if to show it to Eric, but Patricia assures him her support regardless
of Eric's decision.
With the knife and newspaper clip in hand, Finlay encourages Eric to confront Nagase.
However, after years of longing for revenge, Eric wants to move on and focus on being a
husband.
Finlay believes Eric needs to fulfill his role as a husband by avoiding his issues.
However, when Finlay presses for details while Eric is away, Eric dismisses him.
Wanting someone in their group to find peace, Finlay asks Eric to do it for him.
The couple accompanies Finlay to the station, and before he boards, Finlay promises Patricia
a message that Eric cannot ignore.
Later, Finlay heads to a bridge and takes his own life, unable to bear the weight of
his trauma any longer.
Patricia receives the heartbreaking news over the phone, and as soon as she mentions Finlay's
name, Eric deduces what happened.
He questions Patricia, asking if her involvement led to this tragedy.
Patricia and the other members of the veterans club attend the funeral, but Eric chooses
not to join them.
Instead, he decides to travel to Thailand to fulfill Finlay's request.
In Thailand, Eric discovers an older Nagase working as a guide at the very location where
Eric was once held captive as a slave.
He patiently waits outside until the tourists leave, then sneakily enters the premises to
confront him.
At first, Nagase fails to recognize him but soon realizes who Eric is.
They sit down, and Eric interrogates Nagase, just like he had been interrogated in the
past.
When Eric was away for those two weeks, Nagase tells him that his friends admitted they had
built the radio together.
However, they claimed Eric was the one in charge and had drawn a map of the railway.
The captors wanted to know who Eric had been sharing information with, so he tried to explain
that he only drew the map because he liked trains and the radio could only receive messages,
not send them.
But they didn't believe him and kept him locked in a small cage outside with other prisoners.
Occasionally, they bring him in for interrogation, but because he refuses to alter his answers,
they resort to harsher tactics to force a confession out of him.
He suffered severe beatings and food deprivation, hoping to break his resolve.
Meanwhile, Eric tries to make Nagase admit to being more than just an interpreter, which
saves Nagase's life when the British army comes to rescue the prisoners.
Nagase convinced them that he was only a translator, not involved in any beatings or secret police,
so he escaped punishment.
He then worked for the War Graves Commission.
He traveled on trains as an interpreter, seeing many dead bodies and realizing the terrible
things his country did.
Now, Nagase guides tourists at the museum to speak out about the past and find peace.
However, Eric is angry because Nagase calls the prison camp a tragedy instead of a crime,
calling him a criminal for his involvement.
Eric wants to hurt Nagase, so he grabs a piece of wood and plans to break his arms, just
like they did to him.
Overwhelmed by guilt for his past, Nagase offers his arm willingly, but Eric cannot
bring himself to harm him and instead hits the table.
He takes his knife and forces Nagase outside, locking him up in one of the cages.
Eric prepares to waterboard him, but as haunting memories resurface, he drops the items and
enters a room at the back of the building.
It's the same room where he was taken to be interrogated.
There, he was subjected to waterboarding multiple times until he could no longer bear it and
confessed what he had heard on the radio, Japan was losing the war.
When Eric described the actions of Americans, Nagase became angry and accused him of lying
and having no honor.
His superior reprimanded Nagase because of his outburst, reminding him that he was only
an interpreter.
After revisiting the memory, Eric returns to Nagase and confesses that his mother had
passed away before the war began.
Throughout the war, he wrote letters to a deceased woman.
Eric asks Nagase how they talk about their treatment of prisoners.
Still, Nagase admits they avoid discussing it as it brings them great shame.
When Eric mentions Nagase's broken promise to die with honor, Nagase explains that back
then, he believed his government's lies; there was no honor in their actions.
Eric spoke the truth and held on, showing Nagase that nothing is more valuable than
life.
Eric tells him about Finlay and what he wanted him to do, leading Nagase to realize that
Eric is still alive so they can meet today and bring closure to their story.
Tearfully, Eric admits he is still at war with himself.
He grabs the knife but sets Nagase free before heading to a railway bridge and discarding
the knife in a nearby river.
Upon his return to Britain, Eric allows Patricia to finally comfort him.
Patricia feared he would suffer a similar fate to Finlay's.
Still, Eric explains it's different because Finlay needed someone like Patricia.
Weeks later, they receive a heartfelt letter from Nagase.
In the letter, Nagase acknowledges the wrongdoings he and his fellow countrymen inflicted upon
Eric and his friends.
He expresses the overwhelming guilt that has haunted him since those days.
This time, when Eric goes back to Thailand, Patricia accompanies him.
Eric brings Nagase a letter that moves him to tears.
The letter signifies that both men have come to a mutual understanding of forgiveness and
reconciliation.
After Nagase offers his apology, they share a heartfelt embrace.
The movie ends by revealing that the real Eric Lomax and Takashi Nagase form a strong
bond of friendship, which continues until Nagase's passing in 2011.
With Patricia by his side, Eric passed away at ninety-three in 2012.