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Mathew Scott

Starring: Jude Law, Nicole Kidman, Renee Zellweger, Philip Seymour Hoffman

Director: Anthony Minghella

Category: IIB

Tackling popular novels has never fazed British director Anthony Minghella.  He rode The English Patient to Oscars glory in 1996, and took on The Talented Mr Ripley in 1999, picking up more nominations,  and drawing a career-launching performance out of Jude Law  and the best  from Matt Damon.

This time, he tackles Charles Frazier's  best-seller.  Again, he has a star-studded cast,  led by a dream pairing of Law and Nicole Kidman (right), and supported by the likes of Renee Zellweger  and Philip Seymour Hoffman. He also has  cinematographer John Seale  again  - an Oscar winner (The English Patient), nominated for Witness (1985), Rain Man (1988), and now for  Cold Mountain.

Seale  works his magic again; the world of the American civil war he shoots has a dreamy, almost surreal quality that works  well with this tale. At times, you  feel as if you're almost drifting in and out of consciousness.

Law plays Inman, taken by the war from his beloved Cold Mountain - and  from the arms of Ada (Kidman), with whom he has just set out on the first furtive steps towards love. As the war drags on, Inman feels a growing need to escape the madness and return to his woman. Ada, meanwhile, struggles to survive in a world changed by  war.

The film works best when Inman encounters  weird fringe-dwellers (Hoffman as a dodgy preacher, Natalie Portman as a lovelorn widow) and Ada interacts with her neighbours (Kathy Baker and Zellweger in particular). Then there's the fabulous soundtrack.

But there's  something missing  - a lack of chemistry in the brief time  the leads share,  a sort of 'love story by the numbers'  that fails to pick you up and carry you. It's as though the director has finally found a book that's beyond him - a story with which he has tried a little too hard.  And along the way, the thing we are supposed to care most about - that love story - gets lost.

Cold Mountain opens today.



Cold Mountain