Film
Movie theaters, reviews and showtimes in New York, plus articles, trailers and more
- Home
- Box Office
- Listings
- Trailers
- Features
Bookmark this page- Edition:
In Love and War (1996)
Director: Richard Attenborough
Movie review
From Time Out Film Guide
Singularly uninspiring three-handed dramatisation (of a book by Henry S Villard and James Nagel) of the passionate but ill-fated affair of Ernest Hemingway (O'Donnell) and nurse Agnes von Kurowsky (Bullock). This was during the author's formative spell as a volunteer orderly on the Austro-Italian front in 1918. Bullock simply doesn't have a period face, and looks hopelessly lost. Love, war and grand passion ain't her thing, though you can forgive her for looking unconvinced in the clinches with eternal jock O'Donnell, who gives the same faintly irritating performance he always does. Attenborough conjures up hordes of extras for the battle scenes and stunning Venetian locations for the subplot involving wealthy Italian suitor Bonucci, yet the film's vision of the horrors of war proves so blandly approximate it never quite fixes the central relationship in sharp focus. Bereft of startling thematic insight or leavening gallows humour, such old-fashioned selfless heroism and breast-heaving romance doesn't really play any more. The kind of movie the director might have made 30 years ago, and after the very moving Shadowlands, a considerable let-down.Author: TJ
Cast & crew
Director: Richard Attenborough
Producer: Dimitri Villard, Richard Attenborough
Cast: Sandra Bullock, Chris O'Donnell, Mackenzie Astin, Emilio Bonucci, Ingrid Lacey, Margot Steinberg, Tara Hugo full cast
Duration: 115 mins
Most popular on this site
Features
To the letter
Forty years later, Costa-Gavras's Z still brims with fury.
Mind over matter
David Cronenberg reflects on a most bizarre body: his own corpus of work.
Fool's gold
Can an Oscar win lead to a cursed career? Here are five stories of postaward professional meltdowns.
We are the championed
Terrorists and teens abound in this year's "Film Comment Selects."
A history of violence
Matteo Garrone's kaleidoscopic Gomorrah wallops you with Italy's crime crisis.
True romantic
James Gray exchanges urban amorality for amour in Two Lovers.
Playing in the dark
MoMA salutes pianist Stuart Oderman's 50 years as the one-man sound of silents.
Junk bonds
Cast and crew recall the making of the classic NYC drug drama The Panic in Needle Park.
What do you think?
Post your review now