Weak unintentional remake of, well, you know

Rating: 6/10 (19 January 2004)

I know, I know, this is the film of some fairly recent book that everybody loves. Well, to me it is just a lame remake of "Gone With The Wind" that is dumbed down for the modern era, with several essential ingredients removed because the film-makers probably feel they are too sophisticated for modern audiences to grasp. Girl falls for handsome dude, the Civil War is declared, everybody down on the plantation thinks this is just the coolest thing, handsome dude goes off to war, war is hell, girl's daddy dies leaving her to fend for herself, girl has a hard time keeping Tara, err, I mean the family farm going, handsome dude returns home all roughed up, girl and handsome dude ultimately wind up not together after all. The best part of "Wind," Rhett Butler, is missing and replaced with the vastly inferior character played by Jude Law, and that isn't the only reason this is a lesser film.
I will give credit where it is due. Renee Zellwegger absolutely steals the movie and runs around the block with it. Her character is refreshing and easily the best thing in the film. Some of the other supporting characters, such as Natalie Portman as a war widow in dire need of assistance, do fine work.
But the list of faults is greater than the list of virtues. Jude Law is stiff and even more inarticulate than his character could possibly call for. Nicole Kidman is simply too old for the part of a naive preacher's daughter blushingly falling in love for the first time, and it is unbelievable that she continues looking daisy fresh even while supposedly suffering the greatest of privations. Donald Sutherland sleepwalks through his role as Kidman's father. The villains are one-dimensional and unbelievable, and the background townspeople who would have been a major factor in such peoples' lives pretty much non-existent with a few notable exceptions. There is a notable and inexplicable paucity of African-Americans, by the way, they seem to get thrown in for atmosphere once in a while and then disappear without a trace.
War is hell, and this movie keeps hitting us over the head with that inarguable fact. Fluff it up with a few soap opera moments (women getting pregnant after one romance-novel type of encounter, for instance), some obvious foreshadowing (no, don't split up before going back down that mountain, someone always gets killed when that happens!), some really unnecessary and obscure plot complications with symbolism that just bangs away at your head like a gong (having a preacher try to throw a slave off a mountain after drugging her up but getting stopped from doing so by our oh-so-pure hero, then have that same preacher coincidentally save our hero later, what exactly were the screenwriters smoking anyway?) and you have "Cold Mountain."
I have a pet peeve about films told out of sequence like this one. It is becoming a common tactic to tell films out of chronological order. The directors who do this are just telegraphing that they feel the story is insufficient to carry the film without tricks. This was terrific in "Slaughterhouse Five" thirty years ago, but is suddenly being used in films where it is pointless - as here. The most egregious recent example was "21 Grams," where it was difficult to tell what the heck was going on despite the simple plot. There is absolutely no reason to tell "Cold Mountain" outside of normal order, and I hope this Hollywood fad passes away quickly. Please stop!
I like history-based dramas. There was enough good acting and enough action and plot complications to keep my interest. This film, though, is not nearly as good as the hype it is getting as the big Oscar candidate this year. Zellwegger may deserve honors, but the rest of the film is just one step above dull.