Movie Review:

Cold Mountain

   Are you familiar with Homer's Odyssey?  You may not have read it, but chances are that if you made it through high school you've at least heard of the epic poem, and maybe even have a passing familiarity with the plot.  If you do, you've already seen Cold Mountain - from a plot aspect, anyway.

    In 1861, Inman (Jude Law) is called away to war, leaving Ada (Nicole Kidman), the woman he'd just begun to fall in love with, behind in the rural North Carolina town of Cold Mountain.  We skip ahead to near the end of the war, late 1864 or early 1865.  Long since weary of fighting and having taken a bullet in the neck, only to recover, Inman abandons a military hospital and begins a long walk back to North Carolina, to the woman who had been his only salvation during the war.

    Of course, it is not just a straight walk back.  Inman is pursued by the Home Guard, sworn to retrieve deserters, and he meets a variety of colorful characters, while doing good deeds.

    Inman's story is basically the Odyssey.  It might as well be, anyway.  Then there is the part of the story that focuses on Ada's attempt to adjust to life on her own after her minister father (Donald Sutherland) dies of a weak heart.  With her farm in disrepair and Teague (Ray Winstone), the head of the local Home Guard, breathing down her neck for a variety of reasons, Ada needs help - and she gets it in Ruby Thewes (Renee Zellweger), a rough-edged independent woman who has never needed anyone to help her get through life.

    Cold Mountain parallels two journeys - Inman's journey from the front back to North Carolina, and Ada's journey from helpless Southern belle to independent woman.  Both, it should be said, are pretty standard stuff, even if we ignore how much the former recalls the Odyssey.  Inman just bounces from one scenario to the next, meeting various characters who help him, or provide comic relief (like Philip Seymour Hoffman as a disgraced preacher who, it must be said, is a pretty funny character).  Meanwhile, Ada frets over various things while Ruby provides comic relief.  It also doesn't help that the plot is stretched out over two and a half hours.

    So what is there to recommend Cold Mountain?  The characters, basically.  When a plot is a bit thin, a movie has its characters or it has nothing - and fortunately for everyone concerned, Cold Mountain has its characters.  It also has good actors to portray those characters.  Jude Law probably deserves an Oscar nomination for his turn as Inman, a man who is consumed by the love for a woman he doesn't even know very well.  His quiet compassion and nobility provide the film with its anchor and keep a repetitive storyline watchable.

    It's not clear whether Ada and Ruby could support a storyline by themselves, but since they work together, they don't have to.  Their story is strong mostly due to the characterizations, handled well by Kidman and Zellweger.  (Zellweger's comic relief, while sometimes jarring, is generally a good respite from the heavier tone of the surrounding film.)

    Many of the supporting characters work well too.  Hoffman is great as always, while Brendan Gleeson adds a nice role as Ruby's estranged father.  This is, however, one of those movies that goes for all the cameos it can, and they are occasionally distracting - Natalie Portman as a Southern widow was pushing it just a bit.  By and large, though, things work.

    Straddling the line between "middling story" and "great acting," Cold Mountain finds itself kind of in the middle as a whole.  Though it makes some attempt to be epic, and feels that way briefly in its opening war scenes, it can't hold its grand scale, and frequently feels one-dimensional.  The characters add a second dimension, but only rarely does the film actually manage to jump off the screen and become immediately involving.

   The actors lift it up a bit, but otherwise Cold Mountain is pretty average.  B-

Cold Mountain is a Miramax release.  Rated for violence and sexuality.