Not a complete waste of time (but pretty close)

Rating: Null/10 (10 March 2004)

First off I would like to point out that I was actually looking forward to this movie. I'm a big fan of civil war movies. This was promoted as a civil war movie, but there was very little war in it. Aside from the incredible opening battle scene it wasn't a war movie at all. The real focus of the movie is on the romance, but the problem is throughout the movie you tend to forget that it's a romance.
At first this movie is quite an enjoyable movie. The early flashbacks of when they first met and when he first went to war made for a great story. I was actually enjoying the movie, but then enter Giovanni Ribisi. A gifted actor, who hasn't had a decent role in 5 years. Once his character is introduced the movie kind of falls apart. From that point on every single scene there's some other quirky character one of them meet. At the end the movie picks up a bit, but it's never able to completely stabilize.
Considering the talent the movie assembles, the majority of performances were rather bland. First off we have Jude Law. I think he is an amazing actor, but he was horribly mis cast. Jude Law is a very charasmatic actor who is best when he's playing characters with a lot of personality. Casting him as a quiet soft spoken guy was a horrible idea and a waste of his talent. Then Nicole Kidman, who is also a very good actress, but she was playing a character with very little depth. The circumstances around her character were interesting, but she was a very plain character. That brings us to the award winning performance, by Renne Zellweger. She was little more than comic relief in the movie. It just goes to show you, all it takes for an actress to win an award is to alter her appearance.
The only real life in the performances were the small roles of Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Brendan Gleeson and Natalie Protman. The scene with Natalie Portman is probably the strongest point of the movie, but far too short.
All in all Cold Mountain was a pretty good movie, but I think that if Harvey Weinstein and Anthony Minghella were more concerned with making a good movie than winning oscars it good of been so much better.