This Civil War romance and anti-war drama is a snoozer that is long, literary and lifeless. Inman (Law) says that he is "like every fool sent out to fight with a flag and a lie." After meeting Ada (Kidman) very briefly in the beginning, he deserts from the Confederate army and spends most of the rest of the movie trying to get back to her. Meanwhile back home, Ada and her comedic sidekick, Ruby Thewes (Ren‚e Zellweger), are busy fixing up Ada's old farm. When the lovers finally are reunited in the last part of the last act, their meeting is too convenience and not realistically acted. Despite all of the Oscar buzz about their acting in COLD MOUNTAIN, Law and Kidman are so stoic that they might as well have sent in their headshots rather that wasting their time showing up on the set.

The film's few battles are so confusing that it's never clear who is fighting whom, but Minghella does create a couple of impressive sequences. Looking like a rugby game in the mud, the opening fight is a blur of blood and bodies. Mostly, however, the movie is one long road trip, as Inman meets various strangers on his long journey home. The women he comes upon, including a lonely widow named Sara (Natalie Portman), want to offer him more than just companionship, but he stays faithful to Ada, a woman with whom he has shared at most a few dozen words of conversation. The strangest of Inman's encounters, which plays like a bizarre DELIVERANCE outtake, occurs when a mountain man (Giovanni Ribisi) and his sexually needy family offer Inman and his new traveling companion (Philip Seymour Hoffman) some erotic but dangerous hospitality.

Mainly the movie tries so hard to be literary that it doesn't take enough time to be compelling or convincing. With its frequent use of voice-over for the key points, the movie-going experience feels more like listening to a long book on tape than watching a motion picture.

The film is consistently beautiful, and the production values are uniformly high. Moving as slow as molasses in winter, the movie offers little more that candy for our eyes. Trying to stay awake during its long 156 minutes is a real trial. About the best that can be said of COLD MOUNTAIN is that it ends completely predictably but quite well.

COLD MOUNTAIN runs 2:36. The film is rated R for "violence and sexuality" and would be acceptable for older teenagers.