The fatal flaw with the film, and why Nicole Kidman will lose her career if she's not careful.

Rating: 5/10 (14 July 2004)

Cold Mountain alternates between the stories of Nicole Kidman, waiting at home for her sweetheart to return from the civil war, and Jude Law, her sweetheart trying to find his way back to her. For conflict we have a rather nasty band of home guard who race around killing deserters... But Jude Law is a deserter... oh no! Run, Jude, run!
Another period tragedy masquerading as romance adapted from a famous novel by Anthony Minghella. This time its a sweethearts separated by the civil war "tell me a tale" story. The plot is Mills and Boone / Midday Melodrama, but so exquisitely filmed with such an exquisite soundtrack that we hardly notice. It maintains a sombre tone throughout, and goes for tears almost non-stop.
I've pinned down the fatal flaw with the film. I felt that Kidman and Law had zero chemistry: that the film worked, but when the two finally met up, it felt wrong, like they were two separate satellites, individually fine, but there was nothing between them. Its built into the structure of the movie. The two hardly know each other before he goes off to war: they kiss, she gives him a photo and speaks in a poor southern accent, and that's it. Then they spend the entire movie not sharing the screen. They have their completely separate story-lines: him at war, and then journeying back to her; her at home waiting for him. So by the time they finally meet, we have gotten to know them both as independent from each other - and somehow this fits. Which is why it seems wrong once they're together. And there's the fact that Kidman is an ICE QUEEN!
She's becoming increasingly cold and distant - and looking more and more like Vivien Leigh. If she's not careful, she may just end up like Vivien. Her career is in danger of disappearing if she doesn't come back down to earth, experience the real world and real people again.
For a female protagonist in this film we needed somebody who the audience could associate with, imprint themselves on - instead we have someone with only relevance to her insulated celluloid world than to us, the audience. She's like a porcelain doll: elegant, but nothing to do with reality.
Zellweger is a definite scene-stealing highlight. A unique, vibrant character - almost a broad character, but not a 2D character.
5/10. Everything about its look is 10/10 stuff. Superb cinematography, great performances from Jude Law, albeit iffy southern accents right the way through, and despite the fact that I did not like Kidman at all in this, I enjoyed it, but its flawed, to my mind, by the lack of a chemistry, and Nicole Kidman's unwelcoming, mannered persona.