The Eyes Have It

Rating: Null/10 (27 December 2003)

Originally, this film was to be a Tom Cruise-Nicole Kidman vehicle. With their split, they had to find another actor and they hit the jackpot with Jude Law, perhaps the finest young actor of his generation. Law is an abnormally handsome man but his huge, intense eyes convey much more than prettiness. He can play an off-balance character such as the assassin in `The Road to Perdition' or he can play a war-weary soldier, as he did in `Enemy at the Gates and here. Amid all the beautiful and horrible images of this film, it is Law's eyes that linger in the memory.
Nearly as good is Nicole Kidman as the subject of his dreams. I much prefer this nuanced performance as the southern belle who learns how to take care of herself to her short turn with the long nose in last year's `The Hours'. Oscars are being given out for superficial things these days. Alter your appearance or play someone with a `condition' and the Academy will beat a path to your door. Play a three dimensional human being without any props and you get taken for granted. One complaint: in the love scene with Law, she's a little too dolled up. Notice that her hair is in curls in the scene and, (more logically), straighter and drabber in the adjoining scenes.

Rene Zellweger has the showiest role. I have no complaints about her performance but I did not find anything special about it. Her function in the story is to cut through the romance and bring it back down to earth, as she does during the lover's reunion. She does this well but again I'm more impressed with Kidman's more subtle work. Zellweger is basically Calamity Jane on grits.
The episodic film is full of fine performances by supporting actors. Maybe the whole cast should be given a `best supporting actor' award. Brendan Gleason, Kathy Baker, James Gammon, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Eileen Atkins stand out, as do ex-child stars Natalie Portman and Jena Malone as young women who are trying their best to survive in a hostile environment.
That hostile environment somewhat reduces the entertainment value of the film. This is a war and this is the 19th century. We see a graphic presentation of the most terrible battle of the Civil War, the `Battle of the Crater' at Petersburg where the Union army dug a tunnel under the Confederate lines and filled it with dynamite. After the blast, the Federals charged into the gap in a poorly executed attack that trapped their men in the Crater. The Rebs surrounded the hole and slaughtered the attackers. That's hardly the end of the killing and much of the cast gets blown away, (or bayoneted) by the end of it. Also a woman gets tortured and another raped. Finally, several animals are killed and slaughtered although these images are much more disturbing to us in the 21st century than they would have been to those who lived in the 19th century. These days, when you are hungry, you go to the refrigerator. Back then, you went to the barn.