Awright Then ... a rooster, a goat, a fiddle and Zeger

Rating: 7/10 (3 January 2004)

Greetings again from the darkness. My first movie of 2004 has already shown up on most critic's top 10 list for last year so my expectations were high, yet tempered with the knowledge that director Anthony Minghella was responsible for "The English Patient" (the focus of one of the funniest "Seinfeld" episodes). What an unbelievable cast Minghella assembled. Every scene brought a recognizable star. However, as feared, the story is excruciatingly predictable throughout. The wonderful performances make the movie quite watchable, but never should such a predictable story land on a best movie list of any respectable film lover. Surprisingly, Renee' Zellweger is most impressive in her quite less-than-glamourous role while firing off one liners to pick up the pace in the painfully slow dialogue. The stellar cast includes the leads, Jude Law and Nicole Kidman and the celebrity baggage associated. Young stars such as Natalie Portman, Jena Malone, Giovanni Ribisi and Charlie Hunnam ("Nicolas Nickelby") are joined by screen vets such as Donald Sutherland, Kathy Baker, Brendan Gleeson and the great Phillip Seymour Hoffman. Especially effective and creepy is Hunnam. Biggest question I have is, why so many foreign actors in a civil war picture? The battle scenes are filmed wonderfully and the countryside alternates between beautiful and stark and with hope and desperation. Law and Kidman are fine in the leads, but really have little to do other than look longingly into the lens. While Minghella knows how to craft a beautiful film, he has yet to figure out how to write a unique screenplay.