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Cold Mountain Starring Jude Law, Nicole Kidman , Renée Zellweger (2003)
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Synopsis of the DVD Movie: Cold Mountain Starring Jude Law, Nicole Kidman , Renée Zellweger (2003)
In 1860s America, Cold Mountain follows the intertwined paths of three people equally uprooted by war, three people whose physical and spiritual survival comes to depend entirely on one another. First, there is the Confederate soldier Inman who, wounded in battle, fights his way home to the woman he loves—crossing a nation at war with itself. As he treks towards his beloved Ada, driven by memories, Inman encounters slaves and rebels, fends off soldiers and bounty hunters, and finds unexpected friends and dangerous enemies at every turn.
In a parallel journey of faith and newfound bravery, Ada’s road is no easier. This well-bred, once sheltered woman must take on a perilous world alone, bereft of companionship or knowledge of the outside world, and protect her father’s farm from ruin and attack. Rescue arrives for Ada in the unlikely form of a feisty drifter named Ruby, who becomes an equal part of the story as she teaches Ada about strength, self-reliance and an astonishing natural world Ada has never known.
When Charles Frazier’s debut novel Cold Mountain was first published in 1997, his story of a soldier’s search for home and love in the last days of
hapsodic acclaim. Critics hailed the arrival of a major new voice in American literature, one with an original view of America’s most transforming period in history.Raised in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina, Charles Frazier grew up on stories of the Civil War passed down by his great-great-grandfather and those of his great-great-uncle, the real W.P. Inman, a Confederate soldier who indeed walked 300 miles home from a hospital in Virginia. Frazier set out to write a Civil War novel unlike any other, one not focused on the usual famous battles and generals, but on the trials and longings of ordinary Americans in a time of tumult. His novel shared with other contemporary masterworks a moving evocation of American society undergoing massive change. He also unveiled—in transporting detail—a lost way of life, one that relied on an often treacherous and mercurial landscape, and one that was heightened by a true sense of intimacy with the earth itself. It became an epic adventure and love story that attracted readers of all ages and backgrounds around the world.
DVD Movie Rating for: Cold Mountain
Rating 3+ out of 5 stars, excellent performances by: Nicole Kidman and Renée Zellweger
Movie Plot of: Cold Mountain
"Cold Mountain" tells the story of a wounded Confederate soldier named Inman (Jude Law) who struggles on a perilous journey to get back home to Cold Mountain, N.C. as well as to Ada (Nicole Kidman), the woman he left behind before going off to fight in the Civil War. Along the way, he meets a long line of interesting and colorful characters, while back at home, Ada is learning the ropes of managing her deceased father's farm with Ruby (Renee Zellweger), a scrappy drifter who assists and teaches Ada along the way.
DVD Production Details of: Cold Mountain
Starring: Jude Law, Nicole Kidman, Renee Zellweger
Director: Anthony Minghella
Format: Color, Widescreen
Aspect Ratio(s): 2.35:1
Audio Encoding: Dolby Digital 5.1, DTS 5.1
Studio: Miramax Home Entertainment
DVD Release Date: June 29, 2004
Run Time: 155
DVD Features:
Number of discs: 2
DVD Easter Eggs
None
Cast of the movie: Cold Mountain
- Jude Law .... Inman
- Nicole Kidman .... Ada Monroe
- Renée Zellweger .... Ruby Thewes
- Eileen Atkins .... Maddy
- Brendan Gleeson .... Stobrod Thewes
- Philip Seymour Hoffman .... Reverend Veasey
- Natalie Portman .... Sara
- Giovanni Ribisi .... Junior
- Donald Sutherland .... Reverend Monroe
- Ray Winstone .... Teague
- Kathy Baker .... Sally Swanger
- James Gammon .... Esco Swanger
- Charlie Hunnam .... Bosie
- Jack White .... Georgia
- Ethan Suplee .... Pangle
- Jena Malone .... Ferry Girl
- Melora Walters .... Lila
- Lucas Black .... Oakley
- Taryn Manning .... Shyla
- Tom Aldredge .... Blind Man
- James Rebhorn .... Doctor
- Emily Deschanel .... Mrs. Morgan
- Robin Mullins .... Mrs. Castlereagh
- Ben Allison .... Rourke
- Trey Howell .... Butcher
- Alex Hassell .... Orderly
- Jay Tavare .... Swimmer
- William Boyer .... Confederate Officer
- Christopher Fennell .... Acton Swanger
- Erik Smith .... Ellis Swanger
- Cillian Murphy .... Bardolph
- Richard Brake .... Nym
- Sean Gleeson .... Pistol
- Rasool J'Han .... Rebecca
- Hank Stone .... Brown
- Mark Jeffrey Miller .... Sheffield
- Afemo Omilami .... Joshua
- Chet Dixon .... Veasey Town Guard
- Jamie Lee .... Guard
- Jen Apgar .... Dolly
- Katherine Durio .... Mae
- Martin Pemberton .... Mo
- Leonard Woodcock .... Jo
- William Roberts .... Grayling
- Dean Whitworth .... Barber
- Kristen Nicole La Prade .... Grace Inman
- John Bridson .... Yankee blacksmith
- J. Damon Hendrix .... Wounded Soldier In Camp
Photo Gallery of the movie: Cold Mountain
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Reviews of the movie: Cold Mountain
Freely adapted from Charles Frazier's beloved bestseller, Cold Mountain boasts an impeccable pedigree as a respectable Civil War love story, offering everything you'd want from a romantic epic except a resonant emotional core. Everything in this sweeping, Odyssean journey depends on believing in the instant love that ignites during a very brief encounter between genteel, city-bred preacher's daughter Ada (Nicole Kidman) and Confederate soldier Inman (Jude Law), who deserts the battlefield to return, weary and wounded, to Ada's inherited farm in the rural town of Cold Mountain, North Carolina. In an epic (but dramatically tenuous) case of absence making hearts grow fonder, Inman endures a treacherous hike fraught with danger (and populated by supporting players including Philip Seymour Hoffman, Natalie Portman, and others) while the struggling, inexperienced Ada is aided by the high-spirited Ruby (Renée Zellweger), forming a powerful farming partnership that transforms Ada into a strong, lovelorn survivor. The film's episodic structure slightly weakens its emotional impact, and it's fairly obvious that director Anthony Minghella is striving to repeat the prestigious romanticism of his Oscar®-winning hit The English Patient. For the most part it works, especially in the dynamic performances of Zellweger and Kidman, and the explosive 1864 battle of Petersburg, Virginia, is recreated with violent, percussive intensity. Those who admired Frazier's novel may regret some of the changes made in Minghella's adaptation (the ending is particularly altered), but Cold Mountain remains a high-class example of grand, old-fashioned filmmaking, boosted by star power of the highest order
Based on the best-selling novel by Charles Frazier, Anthony Minghella's `Cold Mountain' is, like his earlier snooze-fest, `The English Patient,' one of those highbrow historical romances that only a Motion Picture Academy member could love. Jude Law and Nicole Kidman play Inman and Ada, two Southerners whose budding romance is cut short when he goes off to fight in the Civil War. Though the two `lovers' barely know one another, she spends years pining away for him, while he, eventually, deserts the battlefield in order to get back to her. When her minister father dies unexpectedly, Ada, who has hitherto led a very sheltered life, is forced to fend for herself on the land he left her. Eventually joining her in that endeavor is a feisty young woman named Ruby, played with a whole host of annoying, self-conscious mannerisms by the usually reliable Renee Zellweger.
In ambiance and plot, `Cold Mountain' feels an awful lot like a warmed over `Gone With the Wind,' right down to the Southern-belle-forced-to-demean-herself-to-survive scenario. The difference is that the two main characters in `Cold Mountain' are completely uninteresting as people and thoroughly unconvincing as lovers. In a film in which the driving force is supposed to be obsessive passion, it's odd that the romance is laid out in such lukewarm and sketchy terms. It's hard to believe that a young man would risk execution for treason trying to get back to a woman he barely knows – and it's even harder for the audience to work up much personal stake in the outcome. Ada is like a magnet drawing Inman to her, but, for the life of us, we can't figure out the attraction. Law does reasonably well as a sort of anti-hero version of Odysseus, but Kidman fails to score as a charisma-challenged Penelope – or Scarlett O'Hara, if you prefer.
Another problem with `Cold Mountain' is that it overdoses on Southern-fried cornpone and backwater moonshine. Every time Inman or Ada turn a corner, they seem to be confronted by yet another `colorful' Southern character – be it a fornicating preacher, a clan of promiscuous hillbillies, a fiddler-playing, ne'er-do-well daddy, or even the over-the-top Ruby herself, whose way with a folksy aphorism, after some initial appeal, eventually ends up setting the teeth on edge. The film is a strangely schizophrenic one in that, while the lead characters are underdeveloped to the point of blandness, the secondary characters are overdrawn to the point of buffoonery. The film, after awhile, begins to resemble the casting call for an out-of-town revival of Tennessee Williams.
There are a few good things about `Cold Mountain.' It doesn't shy away from some of the more brutal aspects of war and it deals head-on with the struggles the Southerners had to undergo being on the losing side. Moreover, some of the vistas are attractive. But, apart from a few effective moments, `Cold Mountain,' is little more than a boring, meandering, high-toned soap opera, just the kind of movie that makes Academy members sit up and take notice come nomination time (the film garnered seven nominations and one win – for Zellweger's performance). The rest of us are more likely to just curl up and go to sleep instead.
