Cold Mountain: Critic Reviews

A willed exercise in mythmaking.

As they might have said in the old days, this sweeping historical romance is one heck of a classy picture which is both its great virtue and its limitation.

A good-looking but dull and eccentrically cast romantic drama set during American civil war.

Watching this movie, it seems to be the next level down from great -- maybe too episodic. But it burns in the memory weeks after you see it.

It's enough of a spectacle to enjoy. It's too bad the stars are little more than serviceable and give the movie title an irony it could certainly do without.

It's a great old-fashioned wallow of a time at the movies.

Three quarters of Cold Mountain consist of some of the most masterful and absorbing filmmaking of the year.

[Law's] actorly determination matches Kidman's -- there's more chemistry in their tintypes than their interactions -- although the script decrees that these cool operators make a sweet pair of sweeties.

There is something distancing about the film, and I don't refer to the Romanian mountains standing for North Carolina's Blue Ridge.

A beautiful tale, tragic and mournful.

So rich with detail that each viewer will discover a scene and a character worth cherishing.

A sublime story of brute living and ethereal yearning.

Has the big, glossy feel of a Hollywood epic that's been worked up by experts.

It evokes a backwater of the Civil War with rare beauty, and lights up with an assortment of colorful supporting characters.

In terms of pedigree and sheer, lush filmmaking, the movie has class written all over it. And that's part of the problem.

Cold Mountain is the equivalent of comfort food: old-fashioned, earthy, satisfying.

Nicole Kidman and Jude Law get top billing, but it's Renee Zellweger who steals the show.

Not that there aren't award-worthy performances here, there are. And not that it isn't good, it is. It's just not THAT good.

Powerful but somehow distant, like a story being told in low tones across a room.

A film of many excellences undermined by a flawed narrative.

Blends every aspect of filmmaking -- sets, costumes, camerawork, acting, lighting, writing, editing and technology -- to tell mythic stories of love, death, courage, honor, loss and survival on the battlefield and on the home front in the 1860's.

Handsomely made and vividly acted.

An exquisitely crafted Civil War epic that combines the epic romantic sweep of Gone With the Wind with a more intimate voice that speaks eloquently to the war-weary nation of today.

Underneath the movie's cold surface, Cold Mountain turns out to be a volcano.

Crowded with fascinating supporting characters, who make the long haul -- the movie clocks in at 2 1/2 hours -- worth attempting.