IMDb description: A Marine travels to Louisiana after serving three tours in Iraq and searches for the unknown woman he believes was his good luck charm during the war.
Roger Ebert review: two and a half stars ("Luck is putting it mildly")
Female protagonist: Beth (Taylor Schilling)
Male protagonist: Logan (Zac Efron)
Star supporting cast: Blythe Danner as Beth's nana; Jay R. Ferguson as Beth's ex-husband, Keith Clayton
Background: This film is the first Sparks adaptation to be directed by an Oscar-nominated director! Scott Hicks was nominated for Best Director for "Shine" back in 1996. He didn't win, but he directed Geoffrey Rush to a Best Actor Oscar. This film came out four years after the last High School Musical movie, and it's Efron's push into being seen as an "adult" actor and not just that kid who made musicals for Disney. It works because he is....not a kid in this movie :)
The movie starts with Logan (Efron) providing voiceover about how life can change quickly and we never know when it will. We then go to Logan in Iraq. A morning after a night raid, he just standing around the rubble when something gleaming in it catches his eye. He steps over to it and finds a picture of a woman with the words "Be safe" written on the back. Then an explosion occurs right where he had been standing....finding the photo literally saved his life. He keeps the picture (after asking around to no avail to see if it belongs to someone), and he ends up surviving a few other near-death experiences. His friend and him joke about how the woman in the picture has made him lucky.
Logan returns home and, feeling awash and that he owes this woman a thank you, he sets out on foot from Denver to Louisiana (he did some internet sleuthing to find the town where the picture with the woman was taken in. Just go with it; as Ebert says in his review: "I'm not going to say anything at all about the odds of that happening. The odds are overwhelming against anything in any movie happening, so I should just shut up and pay attention.").
He finds her, he doesn't tell her at first why he's there, he starts working for her and her Nana at their dog kennel, they fall in love, she finds out he has the picture and is angry, he feels bad, someone dies, and they end up kissing in the morning sun. It's all very romantic.
The film keeps the basic story of the novel, but tightens it up. It spends much less time detailing Logan's time in Iraq (it's just the opening scene) and gets way less into the detail with Beth's ex, Keith (the novel has chapters that were from his point of view and I hated them). It also doesn't explicitly address that Logan is kind of a stalker. In the novel Beth actually confronts him and tells him he's a stalker. The movie softens this a bit and never outright says that his behavior is definitely obsessive. However, when a person is attractive or we like them, then actions that would generally seem stalkerish and obsessive get overlooked (especially in movies!).
I've said it many times before, but having a good director that can get good performances from his actors makes all the difference. It's what elevates mediocre Sparks adaptations to great ones. Zac Efron gives a wonderful performance; he's quiet, contemplative, never moving more than he has to, forceful when he needs to be, charming, and romantic. Taylor Schilling, at this basically unknown and starring in her first movie (lucky her!), really sells Beth. She plays every emotion across her face and in her eyes, she's vulnerable and a little unsure of herself and when she gets her big moment of standing up for herself she nails it.
This is also probably the most sexy of the Sparks adaptations. I know we have The Notebook, which has really been the only one to have an out-and-out sex scene, but to me this one is better (and hotter). It's a different relationship between Logan and Beth. Noah and Allie fell in love young and are both loud characters; Logan and Beth are the opposite and while their connection is no less strong, beautiful, and passionate it is displayed and conveyed differently (and really directed and acted well by everyone involved).
This is likely in the top three of Sparks movies for me, probably second after A Walk to Remember, even with it's slightly melodramatic ending that sees someone die (this IS Sparks after all). Logan and Beth are characters I like (and her son Ben is truly adorable in every sense). I accept the misunderstandings and untold secrets because they are two lonely and lost people that needed to find each other and I want them to get their happy ending.
