Captain Corelli's Mandolin (2001)

That was an excellent one.

Really Surprised!

A Surprisingly Unforgettable Movie!

There are better movies of two hours length. I loved the actress'performance.

It's 1940 Greece. Cephallonia is an island of traditions. Pelagia (Penélope Cruz) is the daughter of Dr. Iannis (John Hurt) and girlfriend to childish fisherman Mandras (Christian Bale). Fighting breaks out between Greece and Italy. Mandras goes off to war vowing to marry Pelagia upon his return. The Axis forces march onto the island with no resistance. Italian Captain Antonio Corelli (Nicolas Cage) and his men never fire a shot. Mandras returns terribly injured and then joins the partisans. Despite initial hatred, Pelagia falls for Corelli and his mandolin. Captain Günther Weber (David Morrissey) is the awkward German trying to befriend Corelli. When Italy surrenders, allegiances change.The Anglo-American lead actors strip away the Mediterranean heat. Cage is playing up the quirkiness unnecessarily. Bale can never pass for an islander. Everybody is doing an accent. There is no chemistry between anybody. Cruz is left with no worthy dance partner. There are no compelling relationships and the movie suffers. It's a warmed-up wartime period piece romance.

I give it a 2, because of the beautiful Mediterranean Greece, otherwise it would be 1. When Nicholas Cage came into with his first lines, I thought he was just kidding. Cage as an Italian ?? I'm sorry, but very wrong actor who's acting is also BAD, not to mention his Italiano accent. The story is very loose, it might have been good, but with other actors and obviously with other screenplay. The camera is great, photography also but why the hell did you cast Nicholas Cage and Penelope Cruz for the role. Please don't get me wrong, I don't have anything against Cage, he has some really great movies, but he obviously isn't for every role. It's really a pity that the cast wasn't better set, because the story has potential.

Okay, I finally just got through the whole thing. I wanted to see this movie because I knew it had musical connotations and was about being in love with Penelope Cruz. Which isn't hard to do.When there is a good script and good story you would think that "top" actors like Nic Cage and Christian Bale would seriously buff up on their local talk. If you are going to do a foreign movie in English with an accent of the local language then you got some serious work to do. Nic apparently didn't do enough training for his accent. He goes from one sentence saying something like: hey man, surfs up dude!, to aye mama mia, no hay pizzaria. If you pay attention to his accent it is all over the place.If you watch an A actor like Leo Dicaprio, he will seriously study the local vernacular and slang and bring it into his character and make the audience believe it. Look at his accents in Blood Diamond or Gangs of New York. He nails it. These two guys Nic and Christian completely blow it. It gets better towards the end of the film but come on guys, do your homework. Jeezus, it is so distracting and hard to get into a movie where the characters have clearly not done their homework.My overall feeling about this movie is very conflicted. I loved the story and loved the classical guitar piece that Nics' character recorded but, the accent thing I obviously cannot ignore. They should have done this movie with real Italians, Spaniards, and Germans and kept it real, or otherwise brought in an actor that does his homework like Leo Dicaprio. So there.. That is what I think, take it or leave it....

When I first saw the trailer for this movie, I was under the impression that Nicolas Cage's character was an American soldier, and that Penelope Cruz was the Italian. This was thought because of Cage's horrific attempt at an Italian accent with the line "Bella bambina at 12 o'clock" (or something like that). I assumed he was trying to fake an accent to be silly as he was marching around what I thought was Italy. The accents were horrible, and as always, Penelope Cruz sounds like a squeaky chihuahua trying to squeeze out her lines. And lets not forget about Christian Bales accent, wow, sounded like he was trying to speak through a ball of cotton stuffed in his mouth. And if the accents weren't bad enough, during the love scene between Cage and Cruz, you get a glimpse of pit hair from not Cage, but Cruz! Maybe that was the norm for women in Greece back then, but that's not what just doesn't fly in a love scene these days. Put this DVD back on the shelf at the video store and walk right past, you can't get the wasted 2 hours of your life back.