Colin Firth: Modern 'mutiny' on Death Railway: Extras playing British POW's in Colin Firth movie leave set after being pushed around by 'Japanese guards' for 13 hours (for £2.80 an hour) By ANDREW DRUMMOND (MAIL ON LINE)

Jeremy Irvine, left, and Colin Firth, right, pose on set in front of a steam train at Hualamphong train station in Bangkok, Thailand. Both actors play former POW Eric Lomax at different stages in his life

The prisoners of war were at breaking point. All day long they had been kept at a Thai railway marshalling yard in the tropical heat, covered in grime, drenched in sweat, prodded and pushed by  Japanese guards shouting from the tops of cattle trucks that the prisoners were expected to board.
The wagons were there to transport them to the infamous Death Railway running from Thailand to Burma – but the prisoners couldn’t take any more.

The Mail on Sunday has been told that, ignoring shouts of ‘Wait’ and ‘Hold on’, they walked off... the film set.

Extras standing along the train lines at the Bangsue train yard in Bangkok, Thailand on the set of The Railway Man. They ultmately refused to do overtime and left the crew with a few, mainly Iranian extras posing as European POW's




And just as it had affected the real Second World War prisoners on the Burma-Siam railway – also the subject of David Lean’s 1957 Oscar-winner The Bridge On The River Kwai – The Mail on Sunday has been told that the tropical heat, lack of food and relentless orders were too much for many of the 100 extras playing British victims of Japanese brutality on set in Bangkok.

It’s said most just walked off, leaving only 17 Iranians and a handful of backpackers to finish shooting in the Bangkok darkness.


The last straw came with an announcement by German production manager Ralf Eisenmann that overtime would be paid at 200 baht (£4) an hour and extras would get just half that for transport home after midnight.

It’s said to have made many extras unwilling to continue despite pleas by managers.
Fortunately for the film-makers, enough extras in British PoW uniforms remained to complete the final scene.

Extras playing the Japanese guards were too polite to complain.


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