Warning, major plot points from the film �Cold Mountain� will be given away in this entire entry.
I just viewed the greatest movie that I have seen all year. Now I think you should know all of the movies I�ve seen before thinking that this one is the best, because I haven�t even seen �The Passion of the Christ� yet. So the number one movie SO FAR is �Cold Mountain.�
I walked in the theater like any other time. My dad asked me to go, and I can�t say �no� to a movie, so I went. The film started out with a great battle scene that made me think of Justin because it was pretty intense, and he likes that. I did not want to see this violence though because it made me want to yell �No, don�t do that, GET OUT OF THERE!�
So the main character got wounded in battle, which disappointed me. But now he�s gotten one more letter from the girl he met back at home. It told him to stop fighting, and just return home. There were flashbacks of him during the fights. It showed him meet Nicole Kidman�s character. This guy, played by Jude Law, knew her for about the three months. So he has a picture of her smiling, she says �I can�t smile for long periods of time.� He loves this picture, and decides one day that he is in love with her. So, he�s in the Civil War, and one day, he�s grabbing his friend out from two sides of guns going off and after getting the friend close to safe grounds, our main guy, Isman, gets shot in the neck.
This is where a lot of flashbacks occur, showing him meet the girl. This is pretty romantic actually, but very dramatic. Isman doesn�t say much. The day he leaves for the war, he kisses her. This was the hottest kiss I have ever seen in a movie. It was sexy. It was awesome.
He leaves�and then he�s in the hospital. Are you following my summary so far?
Well, this is when he gets out of the hospital and after he read the letter �Stop fighting, come home to me.�
So he begins his journey home. This is where the movie gets even awesomer. This is where he meets all of these new people and characters. This is where I think the movie should get its Academy Award for best picture. Because of all the memorable characters and popular actors.
First, Philip Seymour Hoffman, the roommate in �Patch Addams,� and the press guy from �Red Dragon,� an EXCELLENT actor, who is not really attractive and all girls don�t obsess about him. I love the guy. He�s awesome. He takes Isman through a town where they meet another character played by Giovanni Ribisi, who is a soldier in �Saving Private Ryan,� and the brother in �Gone in 60 Seconds.� He is really kinda wild in this movie, has an accent, but sounds the same. He lives with hookers. One of them is his wife. So here�s the part of the movie where you get to see some ass and breasts. The scene was hot. The girl bent over the table, and while Isman was drunk, all he did was put his hand on her ass deciding whether to let the snake outta the pants. He decided not to because they got a little rowdy and his picture of the girl who is not smiling fell out.
Back at home, it�s been three years since he�s been gone out to war, and she is still just waiting for him. Her father dies. Her house is getting trashed because she can�t take care of it, and a man who lives in the town, �Cold Mountain,� decides it is finally time to take his land back. He goes over to find soldiers hiding from the war. This is illegal. So his men stick a long sword in the father�s (father of the soldiers) chest, and then stick the mothers hands on a fence and torture her until the boys come out. The boys get killed like the father, and the mother is saved by Nicole Kidman. Now, just before that scene, the Father and the Mother tell Nicole that there is a well in their yard, and looking at the reflection through a mirror tells the future. Now this is totally a wives tale, but when she looks, she sees a man walking in the snow, and black birds are flying around him.
She thinks this means death, but she doesn�t give up on him
Isman meets a character who is called �Ferry Girl,� she provides a boat for him to get across a river. This whole movie takes place in 1914 or so, damn, I don�t even know when the Civil War is! But he rides the ferry with a girl played by the grown sister in �Stepmom.� Jena Malone! That�s her name. She�s a good actress.
Jena�s character gets killed, as does Seymour Hoffman�s. Isman is on his own until he comes to a house of a woman mothering her child. The woman is played by Natalie Portman! I was totally shocked that she got into this movie. She�s breast feeding her child, so that is a pretty sexy scene actually. Isman is told by her in the middle of the night �Could you lie down with me?�
She plays a woman who has a child, but lost her husband. So Jude Law (Isman) sleeps with her. The next day, those evil men come to her house, looking for Civil soldiers who have escaped the war. These guys are just looking for food at her house, or say they are. They carry her out of her house (after Isman escaped) and tie her up to a wooden pole outside her house. Then they lie her baby down in the dirt. A brilliant performance is given by Natalie Portman, screaming and crying for her baby. She cries for where all the places food is, and the soldiers steal her hog. Then, one of the soldiers untie her and bring her into the house, and slam her on a table, and open her legs. �Oh fuck� I was thinking during the movie, a rape scene, �Where is Isman?�
He was standing behind the guy. When the next guy came in, the other one in lying on top of Natalie. �Why isn�t Isman doing anything!?�
Then, Isman jumps out and hits the guy with an axe. The guy laying on Natalie was already dead. That was an awesome scene, but the third badguy, who is a sweet guy, is taking care of her baby outside, giving it warmth. Without thinking twice, Natalie shoots him anyway out of anger. That was not my favorite scene only because of the rape idea, but Natalie Portman is, in fact, an awesome actress.
Isman moves on with his journey.
Nicole Kidman�s character has already met Renee Zellwegger. Renee really overplayed her part. I felt like she came on, said �Gimme that Oscar,� and left. Her character WAS the Johnny Depp of the �Pirates of the Caribbean,� but she overplayed her part too. Johnny did too, but he was cool with it.
Renee played a woman who was really tough. She talked about her father, and then, one day, her father shows up. He is a part of a band now and plays with a friend, who is an actor from �Remember the Titans.� He played the really big kid, who looks like Chris Farley. He�s awesome. Her father and Nicole Kidman, and her, Renee, all have a party. Nicole reads a story to Renee that night. Also that night, the evil guys from the town, not the guys who attacked Natalie Portman, but the guy who lived in the town shows up in the woods where her father sleeps.
Her father couldn�t sleep at the house because that�s illegal, and Renee wasn�t very fond of her father and wouldn�t let him. The really evil badguy asks the father to play a song. Then he shoots the friend and her father, but misses the third guy in the band that I forgot to mention. He warns Renee, and the two women, Renee and Nicole, go out and look for the father. He�s actually still alive. They then carry him out to a shack in the woods.
At this time, Jude Law, �Isman,� has met the goat lady. She heals his wounds and talk about how she lives off goats. She�s actually a very memorable character, and I just cannot leave her out. Then he walks to see Nicole Kidman. The movie is about two and a half hours into it already.
Well, Nicole is out hunting for food, and then she sees him. Isman is there, standing in the snow like she saw in the well. She brings him in and tells Renee that there were no black birds. They kiss that awfully sexy kiss again and then make love. There is an epic sex scene here, very sensual. They have sex, and it�s so romantic, it was awesome and perfect.
Then they leave separate ways in the morning to get home like the need to. Then those evil men from the town �Cold Mountain� come back. They attack Renee and Nicole, and Isman comes in for the rescue. He tackles one man off of his horse and then goes for the badguy introduced in the beginning and shoots him in the face, and chases off for the third guy. The third guy has a really white face and really white hair, and is really freaky. Isman catches up to him and they yell at each other before�a draw. They both draw their weapons on each other. Two shots fired�
Renee and Nicole hear it.
The suspense builds. Nicole starts running to her lover to see if he is okay.
Then the badguy falls off his horse. This is when an awesome camera shot flies around Isman, and blood falls out of his mouth. He was shot too! Nicole runs to him and tells him that she loves him. By this time in the theater I was saying �Oh God, this is the worst ending, he had better not die.� He died on that kiss. I was so disappointed, and though that it was the dumbest movie ever.
But the ending monologue of Nicole made it better. She said �I still feel like he is walking home to me.�
Think about it, she new him for about three months, and they didn�t speak more than twice, but she just knew that he was right for her. She said �I will wait for you,� and they kissed. That was their relationship. Three years pass without seeing each other, but still thinking about each other, though, neither of them know that the other is thinking about each other because only Isman got letters. He got letters way after the date that she wrote them. At the end, he came home to kill the badguys, have sex, conceive a child (as we find out in the last scene) and then die. Now she feels like he is still walking home to her and has a child of his. That�s a pretty damn good movie to me, and a great ending, even though he is dead and gone.
The movie gets 4 out of 4 stars, but 9 out of ten stars. Awesome movie, I definitely want to see it again, but I won�t buy it. It is really R rated for Violence, sometimes intense strong violence, I guess, and sexuality and nudity. But it is one of the greatest movies I have seen this year.
Now I wanna see �The Passion of the Christ.�
| | Back to Top
Quote of the Day: