Mark Reviews Movies: RAILWAY CHILDREN

Railway Children, Blue Fox Entertainment

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Review by Mark Dujsik | September 22, 2022

Arriving in the United States with a more marketing-friendly title, Railway Children is a pseudo-sequel to the 1970 film The Railway Children (In its native United Kingdom, the movie is known as The Railway Children Return, and since the original was released but wasn't a huge success across the pond, we get the slightly redundant, clean-slate title). That one, based on the same-named 1906 E. Nesbit novel, was a small and lovely piece of slice-of-life storytelling, set in the early 20th century and revolving around a trio of siblings who learn and teach the benefits of doing good things for others.

This one is set in the middle of World War II, and apart from the location and the presence of one actor from the first film, there's nothing that connects the follow-up to its predecessor (also hence why the American distributor can get away with the title change without it being misleading marketing). In terms of storytelling, there's also little of the innocence—obviously, given the time period—and charm that defined that previous film. This one takes its time to determine what story it wants to tell, and throughout, Daniel Brocklehurst and Jemma Rodgers screenplay never figures out whose story it's actually trying to tell.

The year is 1944, at the height of the German bombing on major cities in Great Britain. A mother in Salford—like thousands of parents across the country, as some concise opening text states—puts her three children on a train to the countryside, where they'll be safer from constant devastation brought by German planes. Siblings Lily (Beau Gadsdon), Pattie (Eden Hamilton), and Ted (Zac Cudby) seem to be the protagonists of what appears to be their own story, as the three scheme, help each other, and aid all of the other kids on the train out of the city to get an unscheduled bathroom break.

Once they arrive in the small village of Oakworth, though, the screenplay and director Morgan Matthews are quickly overwhelmed by nostalgia (A move that will undoubtedly, albeit only briefly, confound anyone who isn't aware this is a half-century-belated sequel). The train is met by the locals, including Roberta "Bobbie" Waterbury (Jenny Agutter). About 40 years prior, Bobbie, the eldest of three siblings, arrived with her sister and brother in Oakworth under uncertain circumstances (The other siblings, we soon learn, have since died—the brother in the previous world war and the sister under unspecified circumstances). That connection between the old protagonists and these new ones seems to further establish the passing of a torch to some new young adventurers in an unfamiliar place.

The rest of the story, though, just moves back and forth between assorted characters in town without much participation from or involvement with Lily, Pattie, and Ted, who are bypassed by local families volunteering a home to the displaced children but are finally taken in by Bobbie and her family. She's a mother, to Annie (Sheridan Smith), and grandmother, to Thomas (Austin Haynes), now, and while the kids play and deal with some bullies, Annie has to deal with bad—but not the worst—news about her husband, currently fighting elsewhere in Europe.

The movie may not have or refer to additional members of the original cast, but it does have the likes of John Bradley, taking over as the village's bumbling but sincere rail station master, and John Courtenay, as the widower husband of Bobbie's sister and a government official who might have information about Annie's husband, to offer a bit of personality or legitimacy to the production. Agutter, whose acting career was more or less launched by the first film, is a delight on the brief occasions when the filmmakers have any idea about what to do with her character.

A plot does emerge, and it's a surprise how little it has to do with the kids, the locals, or even the specific experience of the United Kingdom during the war. While exploring some old railway cars, the four co-habiting kids discover Abe (KJ Aikens), an American GI in hiding. He claims to be on a secret mission and in need of transportation to Liverpool, but it soon becomes apparent that Abe, a Black teen who lied about his age to join the U.S. Army, wants out of the military because of racist attitudes and actions against his fellow Black soldiers.

There's a bit of irony that the central plot of the movie, which rightfully acknowledges the hypocrisy of a segregated United States ignoring its own moral shortcomings in a moral battle against an enemy with a similar outlook, exists as its own bit of hypocritical storytelling. Of all the characters whose stories are told or hinted at, Abe's is obviously intended to be the most important one, but in terms of who he is and what he does, he's mostly defined by others. It's his story, in other words, but in the screenplay's mind, it belongs to everyone else.

Railway Children, then, comes across as a noble but unfortunately misguided story. Obviously, that's when it finally does figure out which story it wants to tell, which is the biggest issue here.

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