Beautiful-looking and compelling in parts, but falls short of greatness

Rating: 6/10 (2 January 2004)

This film is a sad reminder that an impeccable pedigree does not guarantee an impeccable result. Great cast, a powerful story, amazing cinematography, a director whose previous two films I enjoyed immensely - so why does this movie feel so underwhelming and hollow?
Well, the biggest obstacle for me is the central relationship of Inman and Ada. I love Jude Law and Nicole Kidman, but their scenes together are the weakest link that ultimately undoes the chain. In a film where your star-crossed lovers spend most of the time apart, it is crucial that one believes in their love and wishes for them to get back together, and that's just something the film fails to do completely. One could blame the fact that Ada and Inman spend barely any time together before they're torn apart by the war, but when you come down to it I simply felt no chemistry whatsoever between them. There's far more sparkles flying between the characters of Renee Zellwegger and Jack White, for crying out loud.
On their own, Law and Kidman fare with varying results. Kidman's Ada turned out to be a far more sympathetic character than I expected her to be, and her growth from a helpless and clueless house plant into a self-sufficient farmer is convincing even if not exactly demanding. Jude Law tries hard to inject some humanity into Inman, but his supposed suffering over the horrors he's seen and done never really rings true.
It is also a problem IMO when your main characters are getting constantly upstaged by the far more interesting supporting players. Phillip Seymour Hoffman is fantastic (as always) as a fallen priest who tries to commit a murder. I noticed that people either love or hate Renee Zellwegger's plucky Ruby. For my part I was initially distracted by her over-acting and the way every word comes out of her mouth like a pistol shot, but she definitely injects some energy and no-nonsense humour into the film. It's a flamboyant and showy part that is bound to get awards, but for my money the best supporting moment belongs to Natalie Portman as a single mother struggling to survive all by herself in the woods. The scenes with her are the most poignant and hard-hitting in the film and really make you feel that the horror and cruelties and senseless waste of war is not confined to the battlefields.
Unfortunately all this good stuff is not enough to give Cold Mountain a true emotional core, or make it the sweeping epic it clearly strives to be.