It Gets Very Cold High Up On Cold Mountain

Rating: 7/10 (20 July 2013)

Cold Mountain starts off as some sweeping, dramatic love story but soon settles into an unbecoming, whimsy mess of a movie, in a weird sorta way, but it completely strikes home. The movie begins by exhibiting a mood appropriately disparaging for a Civil War love tale, but it soon creates a strangely merry, airy atmosphere. It's fine or good either way. The plot is just as scattered as the movie is pieced together. There is largely lacking fluidity to the edited story. Although it has good action scenes, they are too ineffectively dark in contrast. More importantly worse, Cold Mountain has hardly any immersion. It detests and rejects you more than it entices and comforts you. I cannot care too much towards Jude Law's character as he makes his journey way back home, as he never ingratiates himself to the audience much in any way, other than being dashingly desirable as the love interest. The love story with Nicole Kidman and her character offers the closest thing to immersion, to getting lost in the story. Nicole Kidman is pure beauty. At this point in her life, Nicole has ascended into super beauty. She is, awe, her most gorgeous self. In a film that lives off its deep cast acting, Nicole in her lead's the best reason for watching, but Cold Mountain is not centered on Kidman's character enough. Cold Mountain is Kidman's movie. I'm certain Nicole Kidman gives the strongest acting performance of the three main stars, her, Zellweger, and Law, yet somehow Kidman was the only one that was not nominated of the three, and Renee even won! Zellweger gives an underwhelming performance, not even one of her best. Zellweger was far too exaggerated, talking and walking like some heehaw slack-jawed yokel, really ridiculous. How she won the Oscar, you tell me. She's just not a good an actress as Nicole is all. Her character, even though it's good in thought, is a big reason as to how the film winds up taking an unpleasant turn to the worse. Cold Mountain has near-great clips, but it's all throughout dressed up too unnatural. It's too divided between pained drama and gleeful amusement. I feel no chilling impact from Cold Mountain. I have to force myself to enjoy it. It's so, pointlessly underachieving. I do enjoy the movie for Kidman and Law's interacting, and that's about it. In retrospect, I was too critical in this review, but Cold Mountain sells itself as such an acclaimed movie and it's really not, so let me say, Cold Mountain is really, really good, very nicely romantically enchanting. There, is that good?