Law's performance is almost too restrained. Ripley") can't resist turning the life-hardened Ada out like she's just left a Ralph Lauren boutique for her reunion with Inman. All of this is very beautifully photographed by John Seale ("The English Patient")(a wonderful shot of Ada playing the piano on the back of a cart as it travels down a country road is almost surreal), and Dante Ferretti's ("The Age of Innocence") production design rings true, but costume designer Ann Roth ("The Talented Mr. The film's conclusion and epilogue are a particularly egregious collection of cliches. Even Ruby's reconciliation with her musical father Stobrod (Brendan Gleeson, "Gangs of New York") feels false, his former abusiveness forgotten after a display of roguish charm and a few songs. Minghella imbues his adaptation with post 9/11 sentiments ('I imagine God is weary of being called down on both sides of an argument' Inman remarks to the Reverend) and John Woo-religious and Sam Raimi-portentous bird imagery (Inman catches a white dove inside Munroe's chapel, Ada sees a vision of Inman returning amidst flying crows in Sally's well), but his central story rings hollow. When he finally arrives home, it is to face yet another battle. During his long trek home, Inman will encounter a hedonistic clergyman (Philip Seymour Hoffman, "Owning Mahowney") obsessed with his regularity, a devious backwoods farmer (Giovanni Ribisi, "Lost in Translation") living with a bevy of oversexed women, Maddy the goat lady (Eileen Atkins, "The Hours"), a natural philosopher who nurses him back from yet another wound and Sara (Natalie Portman, "Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones"), the widowed wife of a Confederate soldier with a new baby. One of those men is Inman, who is read Ada's letter while recuperating from a bullet wound in a makeshift Yankee hospital. Teague, who fancies Ada for himself, keeps a watchful eye on the ladies and they and their neighbor Sally will suffer his villainy as their menfolk desert a losing cause. In turn, Ada softens Ruby with music and literature. Rustic Ruby announces that she's no servant, takes stock of the place and begins to toughen up Ada with manual labor like a Scarlett O'Hara who never left Tara. The ever resourceful Sally sends Ruby Thewes (Renee Zellweger, "Chicago") to Ada to help her run the farm. Embarrassed by the town's charity, she scrapes by, a ghostly presence who continuously writes to Inman, begging him to return. Her beloved father dies, leaving her penniless and alone on a farm she's ill-suited to tend. Ada's situation immediately becomes precarious. Meanwhile, back home in Cold Mountain, the former land owner Teague (Ray Winstone, "Sexy Beast") has formed a Home Guard with right hand man Bosie (Charlie Hunnam, "Nicholas Nickleby"), but instead of protecting home turf they terrorize residents in their relentless pursuit of deserters and those that harbor them. After the Yankees successfully mine Southern trenches from underneath, resulting in a spectacular and brutal explosion, Minghella brings us into the horror of hand to hand combat. Those who found writer/director Anthony Minghella's "The English Patient" lovely to look at but ponderous and overstated are likely to feel the same way about "Cold Mountain." The film begins excitingly, with a breathtaking recreation of the Battle of Petersburg that doesn't spare the blood and mud. Essentially, "Cold Mountain" is the extended delay of the consummation of an attraction between its very pretty stars, goosed up with episodic appearances by high profile supporting players and a very good performance from Rene Zellweger. The war interrupts the beginning of a courtship, though, and Ada and Inman suffer many hardships as Inman struggles to make his way back to "Cold Mountain." Laura: The highly anticipated "Cold Mountain," adapted from the celebrated novel by Charles Frazier, arrives after a lengthy and much publicized Romanian shoot (the breakdown of Jude Law's marriage, Kidman's successful lawsuit against papers accusing her of being the cause, Zellweger's romance with costar Jack White of the White Stripes) and disappoints. Coaxed by neighbor Sally (Kathy Baker, "The Cider House Rules"), who says that any man she speaks to will clear Sally's top field for the privilege, Ada brings refreshment to shy laborer W.P. Bred for a cultural urban life, Ada Munroe (Nicole Kidman, "The Human Stain") is called by her father, the Reverend Munroe (Donald Sutherland, "The Italian Job") to his North Carolina farm just before the advent of the Civil War.
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