Well, the last hour is good (**1/2)

Rating: 5/10 (8 January 2004)

Miramax's "gimme some Oscars!" movie for this year, "Cold Mountain" is a distant and rather empty movie, but does manage to become pretty involving in its last hour. You just have to get through an extremely bumpy hour and a half to get to it, which isn't really worth it if you ask me.

Nicole Kidman and Jude Law are two of the several European actors trying on southern accents here (well, Nicole Kidman is Australian, but you know what I mean), as two southern lovebirds during the Civil War who barely let each other know of their feelings before Law's character, Inman, leaves for war. Kidman's Ada is then left home to fend for herself, after her preacher father (Donald Sutherland) dies and leaves her broke and hungry.

Near the start of the film is a huge battle sequence that in my opinion is not very well filmed, with its fake-looking, orange CG sky and comically overbearing choir music. Hospitalized soon after, Inman decides to desert and head home to Ada.
And that's basically the meat of the story, we cut back and forth between Inman's journey on foot home (crossing paths with several would-be interesting people, but the only actually interesting one is played by Natalie Portman) and Ada's struggle to survive at home, with the help of a sassy local woman, Ruby (Renee Zellweger).
After solidly disliking "Cold Mountain" for a long time, I was surprised to actually become quite involved in the last hour, when the plight that Ada and Ruby are facing becomes genuinely interesting and suspenseful, especially when dealing with the intriguing neighbor played by Kathy Baker. Kidman's character finally becomes interesting and so does Zellweger's, who seemed overbearing at first, but suddenly becomes likeable and sympathetic.

In a nutshell, "Cold Mountain" is pretty to look at and has good performances, but it's cold and remote for the most part, and only comes alive in a few isolated scenes. Pretty much like the other two Anthony Minghella films I've seen ("The English Patient" and "The Talented Mr. Ripley").
One note of interest is that it does feature the first and not-bad-at-all acting performance by Jack White of the phenomenal rock band the White Stripes, playing one of the members of Ada's father's bluegrass band. That's pretty cool, I guess.