A sweepingly ambitious American Civil War-set romantic epic with its eyes firmly fixed on Oscar glory, Cold Mountain is the closest thing the last few decades have had to a Gone With The Wind retread, replete with dodgy pro-Confederate subtext, Kleenex-friendly grandstanding and cringeworthy Dixie accents.
It’s assured of the same box-office success that greeted Minghella’s similarly weepy The English Patient, but there’s a heartlessness about the entire enterprise that should disqualify the usual outpouring of praise, aside altogether from its leaden pacing and gruelling duration.
Cold Mountain kicks off late in the Civil War, with horribly wounded Southern soldier Imman (Jude Law) deserting his comrades in order to find his sweetheart, played with characteristic ice-cold reserve by the hugely overrated Nicole Kidman.
Kidman sued British tabloids over their slanderous, unfounded and defamatory accusations that she had had an on-set affair with Jude Law – and having witnessed what here passes for a ‘passionate romance’, its extremely easy to believe her denials.
Though lacking even the complexity of Ang Lee’s Ride With The Devil, there are a couple of worthwhile supporting roles that go some way to redeem the tedium, with Renee Zellweger and Philip Seymour Hoffman’s pervert cleryman providing some sparks of life.
On all other counts, though, this is one of the dullest and least involving yarns ever to trouble the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.