Personally, I think this movie had a great premise. The only elements that really prevented it from reaching it's potential was the script, acting and setting. Other than that, everything was fine. Platoon Sergeant Cody (John Newton) is serving overseas in the Army. During his tour, the platoon gets gift packages and letters from random citizens. Cody reads a letter sent by Alice (Faith Spelman) where she wishes him well and describes her town. Apparently this affects Cody very deeply because it basically sets the stage for the rest of the movie. Sometime later, Cody and his good buddy, Expendable Soldier #1, are taking supplies to a building when they come under attack. When Expendable Soldier #1 risks his life to save a couple boxes of paper towels he explodes into a million pieces (I hate when the enemy shoots explosions instead of bullets). To be honest, he isn’t actually blown to bits, in fact, he doesn’t look like he has a single wound on his body other than some blood smeared on his face.
To make a long story short (I know, too late), Army buddy dies, Cody falls into despair and his commanding officer tells him he needs to take a break. I’m not sure if he goes on leave, leaves the Army altogether or what because it’s never fully explained. Either way he rides his motorcycle to the girlfriend of Exploding Buddy #1 (by the way, did I mention they just got engaged? What a painful irony huh?). After this he goes into town which happens to be the same town that Alice sent him the letter from. He attends church service where he meets Alice and her Dad Luke (Ed Asner). Later he goes into a local diner, orders some food. He goes to the bathroom and, as luck would have it, Alice walks into the Diner and seeing Cody’s order on the counter does what anyone would do . . . starts eating it (duhhh). Cody returns and we find out that she ordered the exact same thing and even though her order was to go and this meal is sitting on a plate on the counter . . . easy mistake, huh?
Cody leaves the dinner and on his way to his bike he saves Luke from being killed by an oncoming vehicle. Luke insists Cody stay with them for the holidays. From talking together at the church earlier Luke learned that both men are Army veterans and that’s what soldiers do – put each other up during the holidays and expose their loved ones to any PTSD induced rage from total strangers (Did no one learn anything from the ending of the ‘American Sniper’ movie???). Army Strong Bro!!!! Somewhere down the line, after Cody moves in and is treated like some long lost son, Luke asks Cody to come work for him and his local logging company. Cody accepts but refuses to be paid for his work, undoubtedly because he is more than comfortable with the huge fortune he accrued while serving his country. I mean seriously, bro, if you are going to spend your Army leave (or maybe life after the service, still not sure) working full time doing logging without getting reimbursed . . . maybe you do need to check into the VA and get a little psychological eval. I mean does he at least get medical benefits if he gets crushed by those giant logs or machines?
Anyways . . . Faith and Cody are clearly attracted to each other but Faith happens to have a boyfriend, Paul. We quickly realize that Paul and Faith are not compatible plus, on top of that, Paul is a completely selfish and manipulative dickwad (just in case being incompatible wasn’t reason enough to leave him). Paul realizes that Faith and Cody are getting a weeee bit too friendly and steps up his game to keep them apart. Before you know it, Faith and Cody have the inevitable fall in the snow which leads to the unavoidable kiss. Despite Lukes’s constant interference in his daughter's life to push her to Cody (father of the year candidate, I’m sure), Faith declares she will remain faithful and marry Paul. A heartbroken Cody decides to step aside and leave before Christmas. Paul then realizes Faith loves Cody and despite being a total, possessive prick up until now, breaks up with her. Christmas morning arrives and the family finds that Cody is not there but he has left a Card on the tree which has a TREASURE MAP on it!!! The family finds the treasure is nothing but a stupid wooden bench that Cody has spent the previous few months, weeks or days (I don’t know, it all just blends together) working on at the Mill. There is also a card for Faith where Cody admits that he’s been creepily stalking her the whole time ever since he received her innocent Christmas care package the year before. So you know . . . instant, unbreakable, lifetime soulmate love ACTIVATE!!! Alas, Cody has left . . . is it too late for Faith? Happily no. Luke uses his psychic powers to locate Cody . . . I mean tells Faith that he knows where Cody will be. I’ll be damned if Luke wasn’t right and Cody is at a Vietnam Memorial down by the river. Whether he still happens to be there because he had a lot of errands to run first, got lost along the way or has just been standing there for hours (given the time elapsed since he left the Spelmans') . . . we may never know. Faith walks down to Cody, they kiss, she drops some take out meal she brought him because . . . well, I guess he was going to be there no matter what time she arrived so why not stop off and get something to eat?
I’ve always like Ed Asner as an actor but damn . . . did he just mail this one in. Pick up your paycheck Ed, do you want to go over your lines now or just a few minutes before we shoot the scene? Alice Evans was actually the only one who displayed any actual charisma but not enough to save this disaster. I give this movie a 1.5 out of 5.
0 comments:
Post a Comment