Almost? I'm not sure.

Rating: Null/10 (15 March 2001)

It always feels like it's building towards something, and it has it's moments, but it unfortunately goes nowhere but to a sappy, sugary ending and a walk off into the sunset.
First of all, Tom Cruise can't convince me of much. IN "Born on the 4th of July", he was good as the naive kid signing up to 'serve his country', but as the jaded veteran who realized the harsh realities and political motivations behind war, he began to wear thin. Here, he's great as the cocky, successfull agent, but as soon as that job falls through Cruise's performance seems to follow. He pulls through in moments of anger, but otherwise it's uneven and even at times spooky.
Cuba Gooding Jr. does play his role very well. Renee Zellwegger...well, I know she's a better actress then what we see here. I think it's the writing that just demands her to play the same stupid emotion in every other scene. Her son, in the movie, is so over-the-top cute that at times you expect a studio audience to start piping in with 'aaaaw's. This is good or bad, depending on your outlook and cynicism (obviously I have too much of the latter). The best acting in the film actually comes from those in the much-ridiculed 'divorced women's group' that pops in and out of the movie - those scenes actually come off a little too realistic in a film where the main characters are anything but.
This film just takes on too much, doesn't explore enough and tacks on the ending that it knows will make mainstream audiences happy but hardly completes the story. What it needed was more dialogue. Too many scenes were just 'this is what happens' and not 'this is how it is going to happen'. The only scenes that they let hang are those where Cruise and Zellwegger start kissing. Could have explored more through dialogue, but I guess there were so many themes in the movie there just wasn't enough time.