Reviewed by: Joe

Directed by: Anthony Minghella

Produced by: William Horberg, Albert Berger, Ron Yerxa, & Sydney Pollack

Cast: Jude Law, Nicole Kidman, Renee Zellweger, Eileen Atkins, & Brendan Gleeson

Released: December 25th, 2003

Romance and Drama 2 hrs. 35 min. Directed by Academy Award®-winner Anthony Minghella ("The English Patient", "The Talented Mr. Ripley") and based on Charles Frazier's best-selling Civil War novel of the same name, COLD MOUNTAIN tells the story of Inman (Jude Law), a wounded confederate soldier who is on a perilous journey home to his mountain community, hoping to reunite with his pre-war sweetheart, Ada (Nicole Kidman). In his absence, Ada struggles to survive, and revive her father's farm with the help of intrepid young drifter Ruby (Renee Zellweger).

Cold Mountain manages to outdo last year’s Gangs of New York but like the English Patient, it takes the film a long time to get to its predictable and pointless conclusion. Once again the Union on the basis of the Civil War are demonized and made to look like idiots no more so then in sequences like the scene that involved Natalie Portman’s unnecessary character. Even the issue of freeing the slaves, which was not the main issue of the Civil War though many try to make it that way, isn’t as focused on correctly as they could have made it. What would have been a lot more interesting then the bland “love story” would have been the more grand battle sequences and issues of statehood and homeland but those are only battered about here and there without developing into anything grand scale.

The film presents a valid topic of the Confederacy wanting to start a war and even doing anything they could to fight the North but when it comes to the end of the war, they blame everybody but themselves for what has been brought upon them. Director Minghella could have done something like that but chose not to. Once again another lackluster Civil War feature is presented to the movie-going public. Hopefully the American education system can pick up where this film fails to lead up to.