BIASES: mid 20s black male; frustrated screenwriter who favors action, comedy, and glossy, big budget movies over indie flicks, kiddie flicks, and weepy Merchant Ivory fare

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CAPTAIN CORELLI'S MANDOLIN

MOVIE BIASES: Cage is as unpredictable as Penelope Cruz is beautiful.
MAJOR PLAYERS:Nicolas Cage (Family Man), Penelope Cruz (All the Pretty Horses), Christian Bale (Shaft), and director John Madden (Shakespeare in Love).

What is up with Nic Cage? Ever since his Oscar for "Leaving Las Vegas," the guy's been harder to figure out than Chinese arithmetic. For every box office smash ("Face/Off"), there's box office trash ("Snake Eyes"). He has clearly established himself as a leading man, but he's forever a quirky, unconventional one at that. So with this pairing of homewrecker extraordinaire Penelope Cruz, will Cage "Face/Off" or will he roll "Snake Eyes"? The answer, of course, is as unpredictable as the man himself.

During WWII, a quiet, tiny Greek isle becomes occupied by Italian soldiers placed under Mussolini's orders. Among them is the opera-singing Captain Corelli (Cage), who loves music much more than life or the war, placed in the home of a doctor (John Hurt) and his beautiful, lovelorn daughter Pelagia (Cruz). See, Pelagia's fiancé, the illiterate, impetuous Mandras (Bale), ran off to fight the Germans and Italians, leaving Pelagia behind, heartbroken. Enter Corelli's peaceful, charming, musically inclined self, who begins to woo the comely, intelligent, feisty Pelagia with words from his heart, and tunes from the titular mandolin, against the backdrop of war.

Cage is fine. He's quirky, he sings, he makes some interesting choices, but, overall, he's fine. His accent, while tragically maligned in the LA Times, is not that bad. He's not the problem. Neither is Penelope Cruz, who, though a little more wispy than usual, still has the kind of beauty that can make some men change religions. Despite her character's professed intelligence, the talented Cruz has been reduced to a brooding hardass who, for whatever reason, is always running in every other scene. Even the notoriously uneven Christian Bale (his racist rich boy villain in "Shaft" was so overt, it was nearly unwatchable) is fine as the hunky yet dumb Mandras, who cares more about country than he does about Penelope Cruz (yeah, right).

If there's a problem, it's probably the fact that this is another adaptation of a book that goes nowhere. The romance between Cage and Cruz is stilted not for lack of star charisma but more for lack of decent lines to say (script by Shawn Slovo). The production values of this movie are top notch, with its swelling, Greek mandolin music in the background and postcard perfect vistas of the island. Where the movie suffers is that the most interest and energy is spent on the third act, when the war comes to the island. Up until then, it's kind of slow and lilting, a problem you can probably lay at the feet of the typically surehanded John Madden. This movie won't kill any careers, but it won't advance any either. And, as usual, Cage continues his own confusing brand of career arithmetic.

@@ REELS
(TWO REELS)
Extra medium.

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