My COLD MOUNTAIN review.

More TITANIC than GONE WITH THE WIND.
Reviewer: rileymccarthy from Atlanta, GA USA

A friend of mine and I saw a sneak preview of this last night, and I hate to report that it was, dare I say it, incredibly disappointing. There wasn't a plot twist you couldn't see coming a mile away. There wasn't a bit of romantic dialogue that wasn't contrived. (Renee Zellweger's character, the best thing in the film, makes fun of Nicole Kidman and Jude Law's romantic patter at one point, when he mentions that each moment with her is a "tiny diamond I carried with me.") And every Southern accent, save Zellweger's, was absolutely horrid.

The film, adapted and directed by the occasionally great Anthony Minghella, is a misfire. A maudlin, melodramatic misfire.

At the point where movie stars turn up in what are essentially cameo appearances, I felt like the film was sorta cheating to try and keep us interested. Jude Law's character Inman encounters them on his travels, and, I swear to God, it felt like Dorothy encountering a new character on the Yellow Brick Road in THE WIZARD OF OZ. Someone new shows up, shows off and disappears. Look, there's Natalie Portman as a war widow! Look, there's Jena Malone as the ferry girl! Look, there's Philip Seymour Hoffman as a minister!

Thus, half of Jude Law's performance is spent being the savior or straight man to a bunch of guest stars. The movie treats him like he's the only story element needed to introduce us to a series of unrelated vignettes.

Though my friend had a real problem with Nicole Kidman's accent attempt in the movie, I must say that Kidman as Ada, when she wasn't spouting romantic cliches in voiceover or trapped in a truly ridiculous ending and epilogue, kept my interest. Her relationship with Ruby Tewes, Zellweger's character, is the most interesting in the movie. The film's at its strongest when the two are working together to keep her family farm alive.

Unfortunately, they're also coping with town villains who show up on occasion to remind us that they're inhuman evil and completely corrupt. (The most evil one is, natch, an albino with blue eyes and long hair so that we'll know he's unique enough for us to blindly hate him.) They kill blindly without reason, whenever a scene requires them to do something hateful. Wouldn't it have been more interesting if they had been layered, human villains? The movie gives the villains basic motivations and then lets them run amok, showing up only when they're required to do acts of evil.

The film shows signs of ambition. The actors are too talented to phone in their performances, yet their characters exhibit surprisingly little depth.

And the romantic dialogue, all the yearning and hand-wringing, is straight out of a Harlequin novel. When you hear one of Nicole Kidman's voiceovers begin (and they start up the first one during the opening credits), prepare to count the cliches and eye-rolling statements.

COLD MOUNTAIN is a historical romance in the vein of TITANIC, overwrought and badly written yet sure to be involving to those who like "old-fashioned romance," no matter how badly done it is. This ain't DR. ZHIVAGO, sadly.

It's not original. It's not different. It's not inspired. It's not even particularly involving.