Cold Mountain (2003)

Love can sustain a person through war, hardship and the longest journey home, even when it's built on only a few precious moments. Anthony Minghella's "Cold Mountain," which he adapted from Charles Frazier's beloved bestseller, has all the makings of a prestige Civil War love story, offering almost everything you'd want from a romantic epic except a truly resonant emotional core. This sweeping, "Odyssey"-like tale depends on believing in the love that sparks during a very brief courtship between Ada (Nicole Kidman), a refined, Charleston-bred minister's daughter, and Inman (Jude Law), a quiet local carpenter, in the remote North Carolina mountain town where her father (Donald Sutherland) has come to lead a church. When war breaks out, Inman marches off with the Confederate army. Wounded and weary of the bloodshed, he later deserts and sets out on the long, dangerous walk home to Ada, dodging the vicious Home Guard, led by a sadistic officer (Ray Winstone), who hunt down deserters without mercy. Along the way, he meets a colorful gallery of characters, including a lecherous, disgraced preacher (Philip Seymour Hoffman) and a young war widow (Natalie Portman). Meanwhile, after her father's death, the pampered Ada struggles to survive on her neglected farm until the tough, fast-talking Ruby (Renée Zellweger, in an Oscar-winning performance) arrives and teaches her how to work the land, forging a powerful partnership that turns Ada into a strong, resilient survivor. The episodic structure somewhat blunts the emotional impact, and it's clear that Minghella is aiming to repeat the romantic grandeur of his Oscar-winning "The English Patient." For the most part it works, especially in the vivid performances of Zellweger and Kidman, and the explosive 1864 siege of Petersburg, Virginia, is re-created with violent, pounding intensity. Brendan Gleeson and Jack White co-star as fiddle-playing musicians. Fans of Frazier's novel may regret some of the changes, but it remains a classy example of grand, old-fashioned filmmaking, boosted by star power of the highest order. It earned seven Oscar nominations.