Too Much Hype Not Enough Substance (Spoilers)

Rating: 7/10 (6 January 2004)

Typically I like movies like this, but at the end it felt just flat. I had already guessed, as soon as Law's character is killed, that in the one night of sex Kidman and Law had that she would be pregnant and end up with a child. I was just kind of surprised after having Law's character live that long that he would be killed off. Law gets blown up, shot in the neck, trapped in a chain gang (of which every single one in the chain except him gets killed), and travels thousands of miles just to clean-up, shave, have sex, and get shot buy some nobody character? That was a real downer. He should have stayed in the cabin with Natalie Portman it was probably safer. The story was, in my humble opinion, flawed with much potential, but they went a little too far away from reality I think and the finale was kind of anti-climatic for the above-mentioned reasons.
Thankfully, the scenery during the thousands of miles of walking was diverse and a visually stunning of sections of the country that haven't been on film in ages. The civil war combat scenes were highly graphic and displayed the real horrors of war well. The music to the movie wasn't the same old rehash that you hear in most movies today, so that was refreshing too.
Renée Zellweger and the rest of the supporting cast is what helped me enjoy this movie and get through the whole movie. Donald Sutherland, Jack White, Brendan Gleeson, Philip Hoffman, and Ethan Suplee, to name a few. The characters are bright, colorful, and well garbed for the period to the best of my knowledge. This is a film that you can watch on DVD. I am sure some of the scenes are prettiest on the big screen, but a wide screen version on a 25" TV or better will probably work just as well.
No one's going to fault you if you don't watch this movie, but you will run into a lot of people who have seen it. Its your choice, to view or not to view.