A young soldier walks past a bridge, freshly returned from war. Years later, the soldier, now grown, lays on the floor of his study and recites a poem to calm himself.
Finlay (Stellan Skarsgård) and Eric served together in Thailand during World War II. Both men live in the British countryside forty years later and often spend time at the local Veteran’s Club, although Eric usually sits alone. One afternoon he tells Finlay and some other veterans that last week, he met a beautiful woman on the train. The woman overhears Eric talking with a conductor about the railway lines, and she tells him she has decided to explore the Highlands. She has to return to Edinburgh that Wednesday, but she wants to do some traveling first. Eric describes the different sites she will be able to see from the train, and his enthusiasm about the subject charms Patti (Nicole Kidman). When Eric arrives at his stop, he bids her goodbye, and he watches the train pull out of the station sadly. Back in the present, he tells Finlay and the others that he has fallen in love with Patti.
It is Wednesday, so he travels to Edinburgh and catches Patti as she climbs off of her train. “What a coincidence!” Eric exclaims. What a surprise, Patti replies. They pair flirt, and Eric admits that their encounter was not entirely a coincidence. “It’s not entirely a surprise,” Patti tells him with a smile.
Patti takes Eric back to her flat. He cooks a meal for her, and before they eat she kisses him. She playfully tells him she has never kissed a man with a mustache before and she does not plan to do so again. Eric decides to shave.
Time passes. Eric and Patti continue to date. He introduces her to Finlay, who is amused that they met on a train. According to Finlay, Eric knows everything about trains. The more serious Eric’s relationship with Patti grows, the less time he spends at the Veteran’s Club. He prefers to drive along the coast with her. One day they park beside the ocean and cuddle in the car. Eric tells Patti that centuries ago, Vikings raided a church that used to overlook the beach, killing the people inside. Patti marvels at how peaceful the coast looks now. Wherever there are men, Eric says, there is war. “Wherever there has been a war, there have been nurses like me to put them back together,” Patti promises. Eric does not know if he can be put back together, but Patti wants to try.
Eric and Patti marry. After a passionate wedding night, Patti takes a shower. While she is in the bathroom, Eric flashes back to the war. Their posh hotel room melts away as he returns to the Japanese prisoner-of-war camp in which he and Finlay were held. He is no longer a grown man but a young soldier, and a group of Japanese officers drag him into a dark room. Young Eric (Jeremy Irvine) screams that the war has ended, and in the present Eric writhes on the ground. Patti rushes into the room and finds him yowling on the floor.
May 15, 1942. Young Eric, an engineer, and the rest of his platoon learn that British troops in Thailand have surrendered to the Japanese. Thinking quickly, he grabs parts off of a nearby radio. Young Finlay (Sam Reid) catches him, and Eric explains the parts might come in handy later. He divides the different pieces between different men. The soldiers got outside, where the Union Jack flies at half mast. Japanese troops arrive. Their commanding officer make the British soldiers line up and count off. Eric and his friends give card names instead of numbers, with Finlay being “Queen” and Eric being “Ace.” The commanding Japanese officer barks and order. The Brits are packed into shipping cars on a train.
Back in the present, Patti moves into Eric's home on the coast. Patti asks Eric if he minds how she is rearranging the living room. He ignores her. That night, Eric sits up in bed. Patti awakens to find he has put the room back the way it was. Later, Patti comes into Eric's study to ask if he has paid a bill. He has left the house without telling her. Patti looks at the books on his desk and discovers drawings of the Japanese torturing the British prisoners-of-war.
More days go by. Eric sits in the living room when Patti answers the door. Some debt collectors have come calling. Eric has not paid any of their bills, and they want their money. They tells Patti that Eric has been evicted twice before. Eric grabs a box cutter and flicks the blade open. When the debt collectors force their way in, he tries to cut one of them. When the man throws him off, Eric runs out of the house. Patti calls after him that they cannot continue to live “like this.”
Desperate for answers, Patti pays Finlay a visit at the Veteran’s Club. She wants to know what haunts Eric, what has made him so guarded and so unhappy. As best she can tell, Finlay is managing to live a productive life. Initially Finlay stone walls her. He tells her she can never understand what he or what Eric went through, so she needs to drop the subject. Patti does not believe in Finlay’s code of silence and fears what it might cost Eric. Finally, Finlay tells her what happened to Eric after the British surrendered to the Japanese.
In the past, Eric, Finlay, and the other soldiers ride in the train for days. When the locomotive stops and they step off, they must travel through the jungle to reach their destination. The Japanese soldiers take them through a manmade ravine where exhausted prisoners, both British and Thai, work to widen the path. Finally, they arrive at a camp. An interpreter tells them they will work as engineers. If they behave, they can continue to live in the more comfortable camp; if not, the Japanese will send them up the line to work in the ravine. This time when the soldiers line up, a Japanese officer pulls one out and beats him with his rifle. Eric and his friends count off correctly.
That night, the soldiers try to figure out what they will do. They have no idea where they have been taken, so they cannot run away. Eric guesses they have been brought past Bangkok, where the railway ends. He explains that railways have always been built by poor, desperate immigrants, because the labor is so grueling. Until now the railway has not extended past Bangkok because the government realized that the terrain was so dangerous they would need more than a horde of immigrants to build it. They would need slaves. Together they decide to build the radio so they can at least learn what’s happening elsewhere.
Their plan hits a roadblock when they realize that an essential piece of the radio was given to Jackson (Amos Armont), who works up the line. Eric uses his status as an engineer to travel back to the ravine. The hopelessness he sees in the British soldiers working there frightens him. He quickly finds Jackson and gets the radio part. He also begins to make a map of the surrounding area. Eric hides it in a bamboo pipe. With the help of fellow Brits Throlby (Tom Hobbs) and Withins (Tom Stokes), Eric and Finlay build their radio. They find the BBC’s station and learn that British troops have the Germans on the run. Their updates, which continue to bring good news of the Allied Forces’ victories, lift their compatriots’ spirits.
Disaster strikes. Japanese officers discover the radio parts as well as the map. They call in their secret police and again force the British soldiers to form a line. To save another officer from a severe beating, Eric takes responsibility for the contraband items. A Japanese officer hits his legs hard enough that Eric buckles. Several men converge on Eric and beat him mercilessly. An interpreter for the secret police hangs back but does not seem unduly bothered by the brutality of his countrymen.
In the present, Finlay tells Patti the secret police took Eric away and kept him for two weeks. The interpreter, named Nagase (Tanroh Ishida), came with them. When they returned him, Eric was near death. He has never spoken about what happened to him during his absence. Finlay wanted to bring Nagase to justice, but they lost track of him.
Eric tries to be a more loving husband to Patti. One night he tries to dance with her, but turning on the radio triggers him. He shoves her away and storms out of the house. Later that week, Finlay finds Patti standing on a dock, staring at the water. He has something he wants to show her so they can decide whether to show it to Eric. It is a newspaper that reveals Nagase is still alive. Patti and Finlay show it to Eric. Nagase makes money by giving tours of the railway. Eric says he used to dream about finding the interpreter and torturing him, but now he is a husband. Finlay tells him he has been a terrible husband to Patti. They came back from the war, but they have been slowly buckling under the weight of their trauma. Before leaving, Finlay says to Eric, “One of us should be happy.”
Finlay departs on a journey. It will serve as a wake up call to Eric. He goes to a bridge that spans a railway track and hangs himself. Eric does not attend the funeral and misses the final count-off. He gathers his papers and a knife and travels to Thailand.
When he reaches the town where he and Finlay were imprisoned, he quickly finds Nagase (Hiroyuki Sanada). The interpreter is giving a tour of a temple. Eric overhears that Nagase is on his fifty-seventh pilgrimage. He follows the group to the local war museum and, after the tourists depart, he breaks into the building. Nagase finds Eric in the museum with his back turned so that he cannot see the other man’s face. He asks Eric to come back when the museum is open, but Eric tells him, “I've come a very long way. I've a particular interest in what happened here.” When he finally turns around, Nagase recognizes him immediately. He is so shocked that when Eric demands he sit at a nearby table, he complies. “We won’t be needing an interpreter this time,” Eric observes.
In 1944, young Nagase interprets Eric’s answers as the Japanese secret police torture him. Nagase informs Eric that he will be put to death shortly as his friends have named him their leader. The Japanese believe Eric is part of a resistance movement, that he meant to use the radio to send messages to Allied Forces and Thai rebels. Eric denies the charges, and the torturers beat him more. The secret police drag Eric to a bamboo cage and lock him inside.
In the present, Eric pushes Nagase to admit he helped his superior officers torture him. He grows angrier and angrier when Nagase speaks in the third person and not the first.
Young Eric’s beatings continue, Nagase witnessing every incident. The secret police decide to change tactics. They drag him off to a dark room as Eric wails.
In the present, Nagase admits he did not expect Eric to be alive. Eric does not understand how Nagase was not hanged when the British retook Thailand. Nagase explains that as an interpreter, he did not actively participate in the torture. The British troops enlisted his help in identifying the dead bodies that littered the railway. Until he traveled up the line, Nagase did not realize how many men perished at the hands of his countrymen. He says he gave the fallen soldiers proper burials. Eric says Nagase should have known what was happening. According to him, the fallen soldiers were murdered. What happened to his countrymen and him was a crime, not a byproduct of war. He breaks his chair and forces Nagase to rest his hand on the table. Eric makes to hit Nagase’s arm, but he cannot bring himself to do it.
Eric drags Nagase outside and forces him into a bamboo cage. He ties the cage shut. He grabs a can of gasoline, but again he stops before becoming violent. He goes into the room where the Japanese secret police dragged him. He remembers how they forced him to lie on a table, tied his arms at his sides, and stuck a hose in his mouth. They water boarded him, too. Back in his cage, Eric sees British troops parachuting into the camp. He is rescued and sent back home. His mother is thrilled to see him and feeds him. She too wants to know what happened to Eric. “Why did you do it?” she asks him. Why did he hide the map?
Young Eric snaps back to reality. His is still tied to the table. His mother was a hallucination. He breaks and cries out that he will tell the truth. Nagase bends over him, and Eric tells him that the Japanese are losing the war. Their homes burn and their families starve. Nagase does not believe him. “You have no honor,” he snarls. He would kill himself if his army surrendered. “You will get your chance soon,” Eric replies.
Back in the present, Eric finishes telling Nagase about his hallucination. She was already dead at the time. What does Nagase tell the tourists he guides, Eric wonders? Nagase says no one in Japan talks about the war. Everything his officers told him during the war was a lie. Only Eric told him the truth. Eric’s valiance inspired Nagase. He wonders if both men survived the war for this day, the day when Eric would end their suffering. Eric feels he is still at war. He grabs his knife.
Later, Eric walks across a railway bridge. He tosses his knife in the water. He returns home to Patti. He flashes back to Thailand, where he freed Nagase from the cage and left him. That night, after they have made love, Patti admits she thought she had lost him. That he might have killed himself, like Finlay. “Finlay didn’t have you,” Eric tells her.
Nagase writes a letter to Eric. “The dagger of our meeting thrust deep into my heart.” He believes Eric’s mom came to him because she was dead and could sense him across such a great distance. Eric tells Patti he must return to Thailand but wants her to come with him.
Patti and Eric arrive in Thailand. Eric takes her to the manmade ravine. At the ravine’s other entrance, they see Nagase. He apologizes deeply to Eric. The other man walks forward and gives him a letter. Nagase reads it.
The war has been over for many years. I have suffered very much but I know you have suffered too. And you have been most courageous and brave in working for reconciliation. And while I cannot forget what happened...I can assure you of my total forgiveness. Sometimes the hating has to stop.
Nagase sobs and hunches over. Eric comforts him. Patti approaches the two men, who have found their way to forgiveness.
Before the credits roll, text informs the viewers that in real life, Nagase and Eric remained friends until Eric’s death in 2011. Patti was at his side when he passed. Nagase died in 2012.
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