From the Movie Snob:

Cold Mountain. (B+) I don’t know why, but I was distracted throughout this movie by constantly trying to figure out what had been changed from the book, which I read years ago when it first came out. It is certainly an engaging plot, reminiscent of The Odyssey, in which a wounded Confederate soldier deserts in 1864 to try to return to the woman he loves in a small rural community in western North Carolina near Cold Mountain. The performances were good, although Nicole Kidman stays a bit too fresh and clean to be entirely believable as a hard-scrabble farm owner with only one helper (Renee Zellweger). I enjoyed it, but it just doesn’t make it into “A” territory.