"Safe Haven."

Media Photo

This new film starring (Nicolas Sparks written) Julianne Hough and Josh Duhamel has a strange European flavor brought about by its being set in a part of the U.S. where many foreigners vacation, for starters, and then where many of the local people by this media production are at a loss to determine why while getting going and getting on with their lives.  The film is about relationships and any viewer needs to know that while it has been critically panned, there are indeed some reasons for it leaving other such films, even those like "Ordinary People," "Terms of Endearment," or a little like "Cape Fear," or any number of other, similar productions in their proper places as Hollywood productions (maybe except for "Cape Fear,") that were somewhat unsung and in all very good.  The plot as it starts tugs at the heartstrings showing a gruesome scene of abuse and violence and the flight of a victim from justice.  With this in mind, the production proceeds in very charming fashion to depict the victim in this film to be one of accidental and moral high ground, and with good features in a world that is quite unhandsome. 

No Steve McQueen here, or Robert De Niro, or any of the players that would just draw people.  Now people like me know Hough and Duhamel are serious about their work and have acted in movies about the Carolinas area before, at least Duhamel has.  If you can get through the initial scene, much can be said about this production and its approach to showing the ordinary and simple, strongly rooted care and concern people have for each other.  Old - fashioned romance is out of the question, as that does not really exist anymore for the players here, nor would it help given the circumstances.  But the setting of the film in a temperate climate, cinematography, the character dialogues, gestures and consideration scripted into the this show the straightness and practicality of family relationships despite what are threats that catch up in dramatic fashion.  The plot is also about the trades and the restaurant business, and involves a dragnet and occasional violent confrontations by the antagonist, an obsessed and alienated (and stupidly violent) vigilante whose character style is so far out in left field that this is undoubtedly what the critics seized upon in putting a damper on this film.  As usual, the good guys are supposed to "win," though this is hardly clear as this happens, but lives are destroyed that are outside the social net and again, care and concern and action and sanctions that would ordinarily govern.  What's the point of such productions?  The audience in this case needs to sit back in the comfort of the screening chair and at least try to take seriously the chaos, vicissitudes and occasional criminal confrontations that make up the features of the film not to mention the intermittent scenes for the concerned couple and their families:  A dramatic portrayal and illustration, again, of complex and unpredictable issues that despite excellent acting do not make for magazine covers.  Nonetheless worth seeing for the matinee crowd at least.