Apple Mail crashes on Start – Mountain Lion 10.8.5

Question

After upgrading to Mountain Lion - and installing 10.8.5 update, the Mail application no longer works - it crashes on open. This happened after a system-wide crash which happened while Mail was syncing my Gmail account for the first time after a clean install of Mountain Lion.
Is there a way to solve this other than reinstalling whole system? Can I reinstall just the Mail app?
please advise asap.
thanks
I enclose the beginning of the crash report:
Process:         Mail [245]
Path:            /Applications/Mail.app/Contents/MacOS/Mail
Identifier:      com.apple.mail
Version:         6.6 (1510)
Build Info:      Mail-1510000000000000~1
Code Type:       X86-64 (Native)
Parent Process:  launchd [144]
User ID:         501
Date/Time:       2013-10-06 11:48:53.388 +0100
OS Version:      Mac OS X 10.8.5 (12F45)
Report Version:  10
Interval Since Last Report:          4342 sec
Crashes Since Last Report:           10
Per-App Crashes Since Last Report:   10
Anonymous UUID:                      FB47EA9A-B04B-7DB0-B1D0-B012A138E4E8
Crashed Thread:  0
Exception Type:  EXC_BREAKPOINT (SIGTRAP)
Exception Codes: 0x0000000000000002, 0x0000000000000000
Application Specific Information:
dyld: launch, loading dependent libraries
Dyld Error Message:
  Symbol not found: _OBJC_CLASS_$_ILMBRemoteMediaBrowserPanel
  Referenced from: /Applications/Mail.app/Contents/MacOS/Mail
  Expected in: /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/iLifeMediaBrowser.framework/Versions/A/iLifeM ediaBrowser
in /Applications/Mail.app/Contents/MacOS/Mail

Answer 1

I'd try a few other things before a reinstall:
your .plist file may be corrupt. To fix:
hold down option
in the Go menu in the Finder, scroll down to Library
in Library, go to Containers/com.apple.mail/Data/Library/Preferences and find com.apple.mail.plist and drag it to the trash
restart
you will have to enter your preferences again (if mail works).
boot into your recovery partition (command R while you start) and repair your hard drive and permissions
When to Run First Aid in Mountain Lion's Disk Utility - For Dummies 
http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/when-to-run-first-aid-in-mountain-lions-di sk-utili.html
3. a safe boot
4. you could restore Mail from the backup you made before the 10.8.5 update. You did make a backup, didn't you? You should always make a backup before and update. In case something like this happens.
5. If all that doesn't work then I'd do the reinstall. There is an app called Pacifist CharlesSoft — software you always wished someone would write that can extract just the Mail installer from the entire ML installer but you'll have to download all of ML again first if you don't have a copy of the installer handy.