Category: General News

Before you head out to the multiplex be sure and pack up the tissues because it’s time for another heart-tugger from the pen (or keyboard) of Nicholas Sparks (whose THE NOTEBOOK was a huge box office smash). Almost a year ago the screen adaptation of his work THE LUCKY ONE hit the cinemas with attractive young actors deciding whether to give love another chance. And now with SAFE HAVEN he presents us with a story of attractive young…you get the drift. If that were the only similarity! So is this the perfect date flick for the most romantic of holidays (too bad there’s not heart-shaped popcorn)?

HAVEN doesn’t start with images of hearts of flowers. We’re hit with the sight of a young, attractive long-haired brunette (Julianne Hough) barefooted, blood-splattered (not her own), clutching a pillowcase and dashing about a Boston suburb at twilight. A concerned older neighbor gives her shelter. Later the young woman emerges as a short-haired blonde wearing a face-concealing hoodie (and the pillowcase inside it making her look pregnant). She makes her way to the bus station and quickly buys a ticket. Mere moments later a police detective, Tierney (David Lyons) is showing the woman’s photo to everyone there, including the ticket agent. But he’s too late and she’s on her way to Atlanta. Hours later, the bus makes its first scheduled stop in a quaint coastal North Carolina village named Southport. At the gas station/market she buys a cup of coffee from handsome, lanky Alex (Josh Duhamel). Strolling the harbor, she decides to end her runningand settle there. Luckily the local seafood restaurant needs more servers, so she begins work there as Katie. And it turns out the perfect home, a fixer-upper shack deep in the nearby woods, is available for rent. Through her boss and a new friend that lives nearby, Jo (Cobie Smulders), Katie gets the scoop on Alex. He’s a recent widower who’s raising two kids, surly and sullen ten year-old Josh (Noah Lomax) along with bright adorable six year-old Lexie (Mimi Kirkland), with the help of his irascible Uncle Roger (Red West). Could Southport be Katie’s true safe haven where she can start a new life and possibly a romance with Alex? But Det. Tierney’s not given up on the search for her back in “Bean town”. Will he finally track her down?

The film’s focus is the desperate journey of this young woman, so it’s surprising that the producers chose Ms. Hough who’s best known for her work in the movie musicals BURLESQUE, FOOTLOOSE, and ROCK OF AGES (and her TV stint in “Dancing with the Stars”). She doesn’t seem to have the gravitas to really pull off such a heavy dramatic role. Even with a couple of harrowing flashback sequences, the darkness is never fully conveyed. The romantic scenes work a bit better in displaying her cute, pixie-ish side. Duhamel’s not really tested in the nice guy role of that “chick flick” dream man, the sensitive widower (because live ex-wives are just too messy). He often flounders with the kids, but, gosh, he’s really, really trying. He’s simple, sweet, and almost perfect. The wonderfully attractive comic actress Smulders (so funny on TV’s “How I Met Your Mother”) is squandered in the supportive best pal role (if this were in an urban setting this role would be the gay male next door neighbor). Someone get this woman a lead in a smart rom-com! Another TV actor, Lyons (star of Troy and Abad’s favorite show “The Cape”) is saddled with another cliché role as the sneering, sweaty villain (I almost expected him to rub his hands together ala’ Mr. Burns’s “Excellent!”). The kids are cute (particularly the precocious Kirkman) and the townspeople are supportive and folksy (wonder how far Southport is from Mayberry).

Earlier I mentioned similarities to last year’s THE LUCKY ONE? Well if this weren’t the same author, I’d think that a plagiarism suit could be in the works. Both feature a stranger with a mysterious past arriving in a picture perfect small town ( Zac Efron in ONE, Hough here). There’s an achingly adorable moppet in both so there can be a big manipulative child endangerment scene to goose up the ending (really they had to go there). We’ve got older, funny no-nonsense elders encouraging the lovebirds (West here and Momma Blythe Danner in ONE). The most blatant example of the “plot sharing” may be the villains. An obnoxious violent bully in ONE and a violent, boozing thug in here. Oh and THEY”RE BOTH COPS!!! What’s up with that, Mr. Sparks? I’m probably making too much about a flick that could have easily been a Lifetime original basic cable movie (pure heroine, good new man, evil man from past). Oh, and there’s a last scene plot “twist” that would make M. Night. Shyamalan cringe. Sure the book’s fans will get their money’s worth, but what’s truly disparaging for film lovers is the  anme of the director charged with bringing this turgid mess to the screen: Lasse Hallstrom, the Swedish film maker who gained fame first with MY LIFE AS A DOG. Over the years he’s given us quirky compelling dramas like WHAT’S EATING GILBERT GRAPE (with Leonardo DiCaprio’s first great film role), THE CIDER HOUSE RULES, and CHOCOLAT. Let’s hope he can find better material to bring to the screen and will not have to go slumming with Sparks’s sentimental by-the-numbers forgettable junk again.

1/2 Star Out of 5

It’s really been twenty five years? Honestly? It’s been a quarter of a century since New Jersey Cop John McClane spent his Christmas holiday bleeding and barefoot taking down Hans Gruber and his international gang of thugs after they had taken over an office building in LA. Bruce Willis had done a couple of movies, but he was best known as a wise-guy private eye on ABCTV’s “Moonlighting”. The box office action smash of 1988 DIE HARD changed his career forever. Willis has been on a Hollywood A-lister ever since. And now we have him playing Det. McClane for the fifth time this Valentine’s Day in A GOOD DAY TO DIE HARD. But he’s not keeping “la-la land” safe this time, he’s on the mean streets of Russia (the locale of many thrillers these days). And he’s not facing the baddies alone (well, he’s had partners in the last three installments). The next generation joins him in the form of brawny Jai Courtney (recently on the other side of the law in JACK REACHER) as John “Jack” McClane, Junior. Will the foreign location and the infusion of new blood revitalize this series of thrillers? Strap in and hang on to your bubushka!

GOOD DAY plunges us immediately into the former USSR during the opening titles. An ambitious politician is using the upcoming high-profile trial of a multi-millionaire, Komarov, to further his career. Cut to a flashy dance club where a young man opens fire on a patron. The shooter is captured and tells the authorities that the hit was brokered by the man on trial. Jump back to the USA where John McClane (Willis) is informed of the whereabouts of his estranged son Jack (Courtney): he’s been arrested for the club shooting. John gets a lift to the airport from concerned daughter Lucy (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) and is soon in a cab crawling through Moscow traffic to locate his boy. Of course this is when heavily armed assassins attack the courthouse. Jack and Komarov escape during the melee and run into Poppa John. It’s revealed that Jack is actually an undercover CIA man. Seems Komarov has some vital info and needs to be spirited out of the country. Father and son team up for a series of shoot-outs, high-speed chases, and double and triple-crosses in a conspiracy that takes them from Moscow all the way to Chernobyl (yeah, that one). Looks like McClane’s overseas vacations are just as destructive as his cross-country jaunts

The cast doesn’t get much of a chance to flex their skills here as they barely have time to throw out a few lines before they’re on to another labored action set piece. Of course the main draw is Willis stepping back into his familiar screen persona. Unfortunately he can barely disguise his apathy toward all the pyrotechnics. He’s leaping, smirking, and carrying one big gun after another like so many other previous action flicks. Willis can still be a great screen presence as he proved in his engaged, energized performance in last year’s very original offering LOOPER (which almost made me forget his involvement in the hackneyed thriller COLD LIGHT OF DAY months later). The Die Hard flicks have become his back-up, go-to jobs in between his more risky films (he’s helped jump-start the careers of many great film makers). It just looks as if all the fun has been wrung out of the McClane. Courtney attempts to bring some new adrenaline to the proceedings, and he is plausible as a Willis offspring, but the scenes of family discord never really crackle. The re-airing of old dirty laundry while reloading their weapons becomes increasingly tiresome. One wonders if the studio is contemplating a spin-off franchise around the young spy. If they want to compete with Ethan Hunt, Jason Bourne, and the invigorated 007, then they’ll have to come up with better efforts than this. Unfortunately Winstead (so wonderful in last year’s SMASHED) is seen too briefly near the film’s start (we do hear her on the phone to Daddy and see her silently at the finale). Now father, son, and daughters against the evil forces might’ve been more compelling. The rest of the European cast mostly glare, gnash their teeth, and blast away at these meddlesome Westerners. No one’s near the caliber of Alan Rickman’s effete, snearing Gruber in the inaugural DIE HARD.

The main problems with this film seem to come from the way too convoluted for its own good script and the thudding direction. Allegiances change at the drop of the hat as double-dealing and back-stabbing occur again and again till our eyes glaze over in frustration. It’s not clever..it’s annoying. But most of the audience is here for the action, not the plot machinations and iin that department this movie disappoints consistently. The family reunites during a chace through the Moscow streets and highways that seems to never end with countless cars destroyed (enough to fill every Eastern European scrap yard). The editing is so quick and choppy that it becomes a challenge to follow along with the heroes (and where are the authorities during this destruction?). This technique becomes even worse during a chat between Jack and the CIA base with quick cuts of hand help camerawork in the cramped, dimly lit quarters (an attempt to ramp up the tension, perhaps). All the while the McClanes bounce about through walls and floors like rubber dolls somehow evading strains, separations, and broken limbs (there’s plenty of minor cuts and an occasional impacted piece of debris). I mean Willis is just short of 60 and he’s being spun and flung with little repercussions. Not even a couple of big, scary military choppers can pick up the pace. It’s all so tiresome that it feels twice as long as the film’s 95 minute running time. If this by-the-numbers, uninspired action programmer is the best that Fox can come up with, then let us hope that they allow John McClane to join Harry Callahan in movie cop Valhalla. Yippee-ki-yeah and happy trails!

1 Out of 5 Stars