War-Unleashed Sadism, and a Brilliant Jude Law

Rating: 5/10 (19 July 2007)

"Cold Mountain"'s leads are two of the most beautiful stars of all time: Nicole Kidman and Jude Law. In addition to being peacocks, their love lives are tabloid staples.
It is set in the South during the Civil War, a time we inevitably associate with one of the epic romances of all time, "Gone with the Wind." Given the leads and the setting, not to mention the movie posters and the cover of the DVD box, you may come to this movie expecting an epic romance.
What I'll remember from this movie, though, are the literally gut-churning scenes of war-unleashed sadism, carnage, and torture.
I love Kathy Baker; she is an angelic presence in this film. And she is tortured on camera. It's a brief scene, but I wish I had never seen it.
There's one scene of war atrocity after another: a beautiful and defenseless young mother menaced by Yankee soldiers who mean to rape her, steal her food, and murder her baby; a vicious albino (Albinos get such a bad rap; Hollywood should be ashamed) dancing on a board crushing a woman's neck, while her loved ones are shot in front of her eyes; soldiers blowing up other soldiers and then being trapped in the crater they created; a man attempting to murder the slave he impregnated.
I'm willing to watch disturbing material if it comes together to educate me, move me, make me a better person...that didn't happen here. I was just cringing, holding my gut, waiting for the next unbearable scene.
That's because "Cold Mountain" is episodic. Characters appear, speak high falutin', literary sounding monologues, and then disappear, often after being killed in some horribly diabolical way.
These various characters' stories don't intertwine, or lead up to a climax where they all come together.
You have to admire the very high production values of "Cold Mountain." It is beautiful to look at, but not in any new way. It's probably hard not to photograph snow covered mountains beautifully. I won't see snow covered mountains in a new way after watching "Cold Mountain." The cast is out of this world, and, in a way, that, combined with the film's episodicity and its off putting scenes of torture, took away from the film's impact, for me. Oh, look, there's Philip Seymour Hoffman! Oh, look, there's Natalie Portman! I half expected Charles Lane to make an appearance.
I hope I can forget the torture scenes, and remember Jude Law's magnificent performance. He is just so, so good here: he is as believable as a taciturn, All American, homespun, working man of great integrity as Gary Cooper was as "Sargeant York." Law's performance deserves to have had a much more coherent movie around it.