Captain Corelli's Mandolin (2001) from Johnny Web (Uncle Scoopy; Greg Wroblewski) and Tuna

I have written elsewhere, probably far too often, that I cannot recall a good movie in which someone has returned from the dead. In this film, two main characters return from the dead, and they were both in love with the same woman. That one woman could have this happen to both of her lovers seems to stretch my credulity to the breaking point. Of course this did not break the Guinness record for the most resurrections in one story. The New Testament also has two. But it should be noted that Jesus and Lazarus were not dating the same chick.

Captain Corelli's Mandolin is based on a book which is kind of a folksy allegory for European behavior in the WW2 era. It's filled with lusty villagers, folk costumes, war-orphaned children, paint-deprived buildings, colorful village idiots, stubbornly nationalistic geezers, and other literary stock footage. The specific historical events involve a little known corner of WW2, in which the Italians were getting trounced by the Greeks on the Albanian/Greek border until Mussolini's embarrassed Big Brother sent German reinforcements to turn the tide. The next step for the Axis was the occupation of Greece, an arrangement in which the Germans and Italians ostensibly carved up responsibility by area, but within which the Germans really kept control by maintaining "advisors" in the Greek areas theoretically under Italian hegemony. When the Italians finally surrendered to the allies, they had to turn over all their share of the occupied Greek territories to the Germans, and the transition was not smooth, to say the least. The Germans sometimes treated their former allies even worse than they treated the defeated populations. In many cases, the Germans simply rounded up the Italians and shot them. 

I'm not sure what the focus of the book had been, but the film is primarily a multi-cultural love story set inside a parallel geopolitical situation. The historical macrocosm involves the changing attitudes of the three nationalities toward one other. The Greeks are at first contemptuous of the Italians because Greek heroes who defeated the Italians in the border war were forced to go home and surrender to the men that they had just defeated! Eventually, both the Greeks and the Italians realize that it is the Germans who represent the real danger to humanity. The final dilemma for the Italians is whether they should surrender their arms to the Germans when they leave, or give them instead to the Greek resistance. In real life, this was a complex decision - think about it. One day the Italians were fighting with the Germans against the Greeks. Virtually overnight they were contemplating changing sides. Several Italian divisions actually did change sides and aided the resistance with their lives as well as their weapons.

• Cage, Cruz and Bale are all miscast. Bale is a major talent  and he also had the most richly written character, so he did fine. The others were not so lucky. Poor Cage was trapped into an acting choice he should never have made. He can be outstanding when he gets the right role, but that Chico Marx Italian accent was just a bad decision. As for the casting of Penelope Cruz as a Greek doctor, well, it ranks right up there with the legendary casting of Denise Richards as a nuclear scientist.
• There was no need for the silly and inconsistent accents. No law says that foreigners in English-language movies have to speak to each other in English with a foreign accent. For heaven's sake, just let them speak English, and we can imagine they are speaking another language. Or, if you want to be authentic, hire Italians to play Italians, and have them speak Italian to each other.
• John Hurt is a good actor, and he created an interesting character, but his dialogue was about equivalent to that of Polonius in Hamlet. I was getting tired of his constant spouting of truisms as if they represented the combined wisdom of Steven Hawking and Siddhartha.
• The plot is your basic third-rate soap opera melodrama. (Two resurrection. 'Nuff said.)
• In the time compression used in the film, Cage seems to recover from his "fatal" wounds in about a day or two. In reality, the severity of the wounds would have required months to heal, all while he was being hidden in a too-obvious place with Nazis hovering everywhere.

Strengths:

• Movie looks great. It was assembled by the director of Shakespeare in Love, and photographed beautifully in sunny Greece.
• Good source material. It was considered an excellent book, and it treats themes of great importance in the 20th century.

The English Patient set, those who love a deeply felt romantic melodrama cut against a backdrop of important historical events, will probably like this film as well. Use The English Patient and Shakespeare in Love as your barometers. If you like one of those, this is a good bet. If you like both of those, you'll almost certainly like this.