September 11, 2013 - 15:51 AMT
Colin Firth, Nicole Kidman in “The Railway Man” WW II drama trailer

Colin Firth and Nicole Kidman star in the first trailer for The Railway Man, Digital Spy reveals.

The World War II drama is adapted from Eric Lomax's autobiography of the same name, and follows Lomax's experience as a prisoner of war in Singapore.

British officer Lomax (Firth) was captured by the Japanese and sent to a prisoner of war camp, where he was tortured and forced to work on the Thai-Burma Railway.

After his return home years later, Lomax's wife (Nicole Kidman) persuaded him to find and confront one of his captors in order to come to terms with his traumatic experiences.

Stellan Skarsgård plays Lomax's friend, who accompanies him as he returns to the camp, while War Horse's Jeremy Irvine plays Lomax as a young man.

Directed by Jonathan Teplitzky and written by Frank Cottrell Boyce, the film had its world premiere at the Toronto Film Festival.

“Ultimately, "The Railway Man" is as much about the strength it takes to accept the past as it is about the honor it takes to forgive someone, no matter how cruel the crime. "War leaves a mark," Finlay says, but whether that scar bleeds you for the rest of your life or is stitched together with the aforementioned qualities could be the difference between living in the now, or being forever stuck in a battle that has long since stopped being fought. "The Railway Man" transmits these themes with ease, but in doing so, forgets that coming to that kind of maturity sometimes requires laboring long and hard through tracks of relationships, memories and self-doubt that some people who don't have the convenience of a meet-cute on a train to solve,” a review published at IndieWire said.

The Railway Man will be released on January 3, 2014.