THE first time I saw a Jude Law movie was when I watched Enemy at the Gates. A Russian story set in World War II, Enemy at the Gates production cast English-speaking actors to act as Russians because it’s an English production. This is the first movie that I personally saw the talent of this dude. Jude Law is adorable speaking English with the heavy r accent which is a total departure to the non-rhotic accent he has accustomed to during his entire life.

Actually, Enemy at the Gates is not his first acting job and neither is it his first challenge in acting. Oscar-winning director Anthony Minghella of The English Patient cast Jude Law opposite Matt Damon in 1999’s The Talented Mr. Ripley. This time, Jude Law’s challenge was to play the saxophone. And he did it very well that MTV Movie Awards gave him an award for that.

But The Talented Mr. Ripley was all about Mr. Ripley (played awesomely by Matt Damon) and Jude Law was just a supporting actor for that. Yet director Anthony Minghella at this up and coming talent who grabbed the MTV Movie Award and so he took Law back into his fold again to be in Cold Mountain. As far as I can recall, Cold Mountain was the most heart-wrenching performance of Jude Law to date. It’s the straight version of Brokeback Mountain yet it has some action elements in it. But the action scenes here are totally different from that of Enemy at the Gates which is a movie intended to be void of emotion. Here in Cold Mountain, every moment in the action scenes have their equivalent emotional intensity.

After those three successive serious movies, Jude Law deserved a break. But what a break he had when he was cast opposite the great late Laurence Olivier in a light pulp fiction movie called Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow which depicts a futuristic picture of 1939 New York.

Following Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, Alfie was commissioned to reprise the role of Alfie. To my mind, casting him in a lame duck comedy was really wrong. I never enjoyed Alfie the character in the film because he was such a braggart. But there’s one redeeming factor in the movie though. At least, Jude Law and Susan Sarandon had onscreen chemistry.