Tagline: You know it when you find it. IMDb description: A young woman with a mysterious past lands in Southport, North Carolina where her bond with a widower forces her to confront the dark secret that haunts her.
Roger Ebert review: sadly, Roger Ebert passed away a couple months after this film was released, and therefore the review on his site is not by him.
Female protagonist: Katie (Julianne Hough)
Male protagonist: Alex (Josh Duhamel)
Star supporting cast: just Cobie Smulders as Katie's friendly neighbor, Jo
Background: This is the 8th Sparks movie adaptation, coming just a year after The Lucky One. By this point, the studio knows exactly what they're doing to promote this film and who the audience is - it's released on Valentine's Day and announces that it's from the author of "The Notebook" and "Dear John". It's always "The Notebook" that is referenced, as it's seen as the high-water mark that all other adaptions should strive to emulate. It also references "Dear John", which seems a bit weird to me because "The Lucky One" is a better movie and the more recent of the two. Julianne Hough was starting to make a name for herself separate from Dancing with the Stars, and Josh Duhamel was dipping into leading man/rom-com roles after stints in the Transformers movies (and starring as Tad Hamilton in one of my cheesy rom-com favorites, Win a Date With Tad Hamilton).
Katie (Hough) is quite literally looking for a safe haven. She's arrived in Southport by catching a last minute bus after fleeing something dangerous. She's on the run, but we don't yet know why. We do know that she wants to be alone and live a quiet life, just living in a small cottage in the woods and waitressing at a local restaurant. Katie doesn't have a car, so she walks everywhere including the local "grocery store" run by handsome widower and dad of two Alex (Duhamel). He gives her a bike, they spend a day at the beach with this kids, they fall in love. But what is Katie's secret past?!
The movie wants us to think Katie has done something truly terrible because a cop is chasing her. When Alex sees her face on one of those "Wanted" posters he is incredulous that the woman he's just fallen in love with is in trouble with the law. He confronts Katie and she decides to leave. Alex recognizes his mistake and has the classic "chase after someone before they leave" moment, this time at a ferry. She then tells Alex she's not running from the cops, but A cop: her abusive husband.
This is entirely different from the book and I hate the change. In the book, Katie is secretive about her former life with Alex because she's afraid of being caught by her husband if she gets too comfortable. Alex intuits a lot about her based on his background as a criminal investigator in the military (this back story is completely gone in the movie). He pieces a lot of it together but tells Katie she only has to tell him what she's comfortable telling. And then she does, because she's building trust in their relationship. The movie just ruins all of that for the cheesy "oh no I made a mistake I need to run after them."
In my opinion, the novel tells the story in a better way. It doesn't make us guess about Katie's background, and it tells how she tried to get away several times and she planned her escape for months. It's great character-building for Katie, and a lot of that is lost in the movie (although I do think Hough does a decent enough job).
This is the second time that a Sparks adaptation is directed by Lasse Halstrom (he did Dear John, too). He's the only director to repeat in the Sparks Oeuvre, which I guess is something. He's a good director, but I think he's saddled with a somewhat bad script. The script jettisons much of the backstory of both Katie and Alex, to the detriment of both. They then become just attractive people that fall in love, which isn't bad but also leaves this film a bit....shrug, I guess.
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