In Love and War (1996)

Director: Richard Attenborough

Cast: Sandra Bullock, Chris O’Donnell, Mackenzie Astin

Synopsis: The story of the relationship between young writer Ernest Hemingway and the nurse who nursed him back to health after he was wounded in Italy during WWI.

Most reviewers savaged In Love and War, Richard Attenborough’s romanticised account of young Ernest Hemingway’s love affair with Red Cross nurse Agnes von Kurowsky during the Great War, but it’s really not so bad.   There’s definitely a Mills & Boon feel to it, but then what would you expect from a wartime love story called In Love and War? And you know straight off that any film directed by Attenborough is going to have an old-fashioned feel about it.   Even Chris O’Donnell (29 Palms) is quite likeable as the young Ernest Hemingway – young, dumb and full of something unmentionable – who falls for the nurse who fights to save his leg when the Italian doctor – who will become Hemingway’s love rival – is intent on chopping it off.    O’Donnell has just the right mix of youthful macho posturing and roguish charm for which the part calls.   Sandra Bullock (The Blind Side, Gravity) looks perhaps a little too lovely as the nurse for whom Hemingway falls, even when she’s covered in blood and dirt, but still gives a decent performance. The film also looks good.

(Reviewed 24th January 2012)