Cruze and Cage: wrong chemistry

Rating: 5/10 (18 May 2002)

It's hard to pinpoint the reasons of the failure of Captain Corelli's Mandolin. Is it another good example of a how-to-cash-in-on-a-literary-success-and-do it-hastily-so-your-audience-is-hooked? Is it really what happened? The book is already a few years old, and it wasn't a Grisham after all. So what's or who's responsible for such a laughable result?
One thing most of the critics rightfully pointed out: the language, or languages, of the film. On a remote Greek island invaded first by liberal (or inept) Italian soldiers then by a big bad German army, everybody speak English for the sake of the American audience who still feels deeply embarrassed when Nicholas Cage (seemingly speaking some Greek, we assume) is the go-between during a `surrender' ceremony: he reads the Greek text from the island official, translates it into Italian, I mean English, then goes get a German soldier who doesn't appear to be disturbed by any language barrier (actually, does the German soldier speak Italian, German or Greek: only his director could tell).
The rhythm of the film gives you the feeling that we're dealing with several different stories seemingly directed by different people then spliced together by a team of editors who thought that adding a totally irrelevant earthquake at the end would move us For those of us still awake, it just confirmed that the filmmakers had no idea how to kill time. The evolving relationship between Cruze and Cage is so unrelated to the rest of the narrative that when you get back to the island and the existing conflicts, you feel you just visited another island for a few minutes. Cruze's fiancé, which should have a link between Cruze/Cage and war situation on the island is indeed poorly used, and we either don't care about him, or just find him superfluous.
The filmmakers tried too hard at being politically correct and at satisfying their subtitle-haters American audience, and succeed at neither. They also attempted at chewing more than they and we can swallow: show side-by-side WWII and its geopolitical implication and a love story, all true stories. Titanic tried and made it, but we're not talking James Cameron here The narrative drifts from one focus to another, linking the two stories amateurishly, showing seemingly separate episodes without any warmth or talent, either from the cast or the production crew. The extreme violence of the last 30 minutes is so seems to be coming from left field, when compared with the rest of the film: the rhythm is totally off.
The last meeting between our two love birds, reunion intended to be climatic and tearjearking, falls so flat that the word awkward comes to mind: Cage appears to be years older, but not Cruze. Maybe the filmmakers were looking, without any kind of focal point or heart, for a Hollywoodian ending, and, as a matter of consequence, the actors are gauche and clumsy and don't know what to do, and neither do we: should we ask for a refund?