I Got Punk'd

Rating: 2/10 (12 March 2004)

Actually I had major doubts about watching this movie, but when I saw the trailer, I though that it was going to be awesome. Unfortunately the trailer contained ALL the best scenes from this extremely long movie! I wasn't aware of that & naively thought, the movie could offer me something more.
What I totally hated is that there was ONLY ONE battle scene in the movie!!! The one which was going on for something like 5 minutes & was shown in the trailer! Yep, no more battle scenes for the entire 2 & half hour movie about the civil war! What the hell? Is Miramax in such bad financial state? Couldn't it have afforded battle scenes or what?
Apparently most of the money was spent on the actors' salaries. Yeah, money well spent, since most actors in this movie couldn't do the most important thing - portray credible characters! Yeah, they were all wonderful at moaning, whining, crying & expressing different emotions. But did they manage to make us viewers believe that depicted characters could have existed in real? NO! The acting was very emotional in the beginning & got simply pathetic by the end of the flick. The only one, who's done her job well was Renee Zellweger!!! Her acting was awesome & it was the ONLY thing I enjoyed about Cold Mountain!!!
The movie is based on the book, which I haven't read, so maybe I ain't gonna be very fair. But to me the story seemed to be quite sappy. It featured some goofs & stupid plot lines. It would be OK, if the actors were able to play believably, but they couldn't & all the flaws became evident to the viewers.
Maybe the direction is to be blamed on such far-fetched performance. The movie focuses too much on emotions, but it sometimes doesn't make sense. Apparently, the idea was to show the misery of civil citizens, who suffered the terrible consequences of war. The director failed to do this. The main character is running through the woods & swamps occasionally coming across some civil personages, who are mostly weird & don't meet sympathy from viewers.
To sum up, the flick appeared a far-fetched, pathetic,unpatriotic, cheap anti-war crap to me. And if to be honest, I felt some compassion towards the characters in the beginning, but by the end of it I could care less, because of terrible direction & over-acting. The movie has some clear anti-war trend, but it seems ludicrous, cause the war itself wasn't even shown well enough .
According to the trailer, it was gonna be an uplifting patriotic film with vivid breathtaking battle scenes. In real, it sucked. I got punk'd. But I guess, it was my fault. I should have read the book at first.
P.S.: Harvey what Oscar award are you talking about? You're lucky to be even nominated!