| COLD MOUNTAIN - 2003 Jude Law - Nicole Kidman - Rene Zellweger I saw Stuck On You, Cold Mountain and Paycheck in 2 days and here is what I was expecting: Stuck On You would be shit, Paycheck would be OK and Cold Mountain would be in my top 10 of 2003. Here is what I got: Stuck On You (7/10), Paycheck (6/10) and Cold Mountain... definitely not what I expected. The movie plays with flashback popping out from nowhere in the beginning but then settles and plays chronologically, it was good this way, at least we understood the story better than to make the movie play from beginning to end chronologically, this way it has at least some style. The movie starts off when the enemy, whoever they were plant explosives under the good guys' base, whoever those are too. We meet Inman (Law) who looks cool and .. correct between all the others with a book and letters from his Cold Mountain sweetheart in his backpack. Seconds later everything goes ball, the camp blows into smithereens but luckily he and his friends survive, go to war beat the living hell of plenty of baddies and come back to base safe except for one, the young fuck that though he could fight. So, because they killed a couple of bad guys they are sent on a special Splinter Cell style mission to kill the baddies hiding in the forest, so they do, In's buddy gets shot, he tries to save him and gets shot in the neck, although the bullet only scratches his neck. Then we meet Ada (Kidman), a rich daddy's girl that was just moved into Cold Mountain, her father is shortly played by Donald Sutherland but later dies, we also get a badly acted Kidman and OK acted Law trying to flirt with each other. Inman decides to get the fuck away from the war as a deserter and go reach his sweetheart, during his perilous journey back home he meets plenty of fucked up people played by well known actors like Natalie Portman as the loving wife with a child and a past away husband, Philip Seymour Hoffman as the tag along preacher, Jena Malone as the river crosser and Giovanni Ribisi at the bounty hunter. However back in Cold Mountain, the new leaders of tomorrow have taken over and kill practically everybody on their way for fun, though the chief of the little squad likes Ada and wishes that Inman would never return, also with the gang of fucks is an acrobat with a butt ugly face and white hair. Ada without daddy to help her out she takes under her roof Ruby (Zelwegger) a drifter with an ugly face and character to help her out, together they rebuild the house and yard and catch Ruby's musician dad that later on leads the story to the end setting, in a cold mountain forest. The movie has nice aerial shots of mountains and nicely blends in the different seasons of the year during Ada's long wait for Inman to return. Jude Law plays well just like in all his films, Zellwegger is good, Kidman is a little bit off, but the whole cast did a good job with their accents. The opening scene was nice, awesome explosion, actually most parts with Law in them were good but still Kidman and Zellwegger's part just didn't seem to be going somewhere, they had no purpose, like the possessed rooster. The other actors from the film, the known ones with small parts were all good, and.. one last thing, during the Portman scene with the 3 baddies that try to rape her and eat all she's got.. the only baddy with a good heart was that Cillian Murphy ?? As a result, without Kidman's narration, you just wouldn't feel any emotions towards the characters, like in Pear Harbor during Ben Laden return home. The movie just didn't do it for me, I was expecting better. My score for Cold Mountain is 5/10 |