Cold Mountain (2003)

Zellweger is the Redeeming Factor in This Otherwise Trite Film

Take the plot from Moulin Rouge, move it from Paris to the Civil War South, tweak it a bit here and there, and you get the film version of Cold Mountain. Placing an overrated Australian actress and a British pretty boy in the lead roles of a film meant to be about the American South during the Civil War is beyond offensive.
Were there no American actors available to take on these parts? Not surprisingly, neither Kidman nor Law could effectively nail the accents, which made an already trite, poorly executed love story even more painful to withstand. As is frequently the case with Nicole Kidman, you get a self-conscious, contrived performance rather than a reliable and convincing portrayel of a definitive character with true dimension. As is also frequently the case with her movies, the casting agents deftly placed a reliable supporting actress in the film to counteract her obvious weakness. Renee Zellweger single handedly carried the movie and made it watchable. For this reason, I awarded the film two stars. Her performance makes watching this otherwise
poorly casted film worthwhile. June 23, 2008

Wet Week

This was visually OK but overlong and not remarkable. As an australian I should be prejudiced but have to say Nicole Kidman overrated. I own this movie but would not sit through it again. One to ten, ten being best, give this one four. June 18, 2008

common people overwhelmed by war

I loved the book and found the movie just as good, which is unusual. The Battle of the Crater [not in the book] is especially good--awful, really. Confederate armies on the verge of defeat are blown to Hell by an underground mine. Well-fed, well-trained Union soldiers advance into the breech only to be mowed down by the famished, desperate and shell-shocked survivors. Courage beyond the bounds of courage. The battle ends with mutilated Federal corpses piled up like cord wood...it's not a cinematic invention...it happened just this way.

The rest of film is excellent, too, but certainly far from perfect. The home guards, chasing down disgruntled soldiers and run away slaves, are just too evil for words. As a matter of fact, they are just too evil for reality. Slaves were valuable and deserting soldiers could still serve in the collapsing Confederate armies. Wholesale murder wasn't in the cards. At the same time, a film needs villains but sometimes villainy is more effective if handled more delicately...with more subtlety.

Still the film worked for me, especially the enormous tragedy of women--impoverished, grief-stricken women--waiting for men who would never return...waiting for men who would never again plough a field or make love to them again. Multiply Ada by hundreds of thousands and we start to get a feel for the unfathomable tragedy that was the American Civil War. 620,000 men never came home...more than all the other American wars put together. The South was especially devastated...most of her military aged men were dead or crippled while, simultaneously, the Federal Government exacted full revenge on the flattened South.

Hey! It "unified" the nation or was the nation's disunion just internalized? By the way, I'm a Southernor and wasn't disturbed by "fake" accents. It's been going on long before "Gone with the Wind."

Ron Braithwaite, author of novels--"Skull Rack" and "Hummingbird God"--on the Spanish Conquest of Mexico June 6, 2008

Highly Recommended

This film is excellent. I was very impressed with the story line and greatly appreciated the characterizations by Nicole Kidman and Renee Zellweger. If you are interested in the Civil War era, this is an appropriate film and will hold your interest. May 2, 2008

Good and long.

Good, (and very long), civil war era drama. One of the few movies that focuses on home life during the war, rather than the war itself. Some over dramatic scenes, (including a chicken attack of all things), takes the movie out of the "great movie" category, but it's still a very good story, with fantastic cinematography and surround sound. Worth a look, if you've got the time of course. April 13, 2008

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