Brewing up a Strom

Safe Haven
DIRECTED BY: Lasse Hallstrom
STARRING: Julianne Hough, Josh Duhamel, David Lyons, Cobie Smulders
CERT: 15A

 

I MENTIONED last week that the final scene in the horror flick Mama was one of the silliest things I’ve ever witnessed in a cinema. But poor old wretched Mama has nothing on Safe Haven, which I can safely say has the most jaw-droppingly foolish ending in all of cinema history.

In fact, it is so dumb that I strongly recommend you see the film just for the ending, so you can witness this absolute gem of human stupidity for yourself. But we’ll get back to that.

Safe Haven is the latest adaptation of a Nicholas Sparks novel to hit the screen. It’s directed by Lasse Hallstrom, who returns to Sparksland after the recent Dear John and does a somewhat better job this time. At least until he loses his mind and goes all M Night Shyamalan.

It’s the story of a young woman called Katie (Hough), who flees her home in Boston and jumps on board a bus, narrowly avoiding the pursuing police.

En route to Atlanta, she decides to stay and start a new life in the postcard seaside town of Southport, North Carolina. She sets up home in a rickety cabin in the woods, befriending a nosey neighbour named Jo (Smulders) and slowly but inevitably falling for handsome local widower Alex (Dyhamel).

Alex’s daughter Lexie (Mimi Kirkland) loves the new arrival, but his son Josh (Noah Lomax) doesn’t fancy anyone taking his dead mother’s place. All the while there’s a cop (Lyons) on Katie’s trail and her dark past is catching up.

There’s a mild thriller element here that’s new to the Sparks universe and a detour into domestic relations that we don’t usually see in his work either. But mostly this is classic Sparks – boy meets girl in idyllic Carolina location, death and other obstacles raise their heads, but love conquers all, helped along by convenient thunderstorms.

As these soap opera romances go, Safe Haven is not the worst. Hough and Duhamel make a likeable screen couple, little Mimi Kirkland is an adorable actress and the locations are beautiful.

The film was shot last summer in Southport, just down the road from my wife’s hometown. It’s every bit as gorgeous as it looks on screen, though the locals may have a few sniggers at some of what they see.
Like the geographically bonkers notion that you would make a pitstop here on your way from Boston to Atlanta, or that a cabin exists in the entire region that hasn’t been refurbished to fleece the tourists. The sight of an empty beach on a fine afternoon in July will get a great laugh.

Wisely, I suppose, there’s no mention of the local nuclear plant. Though considering how the story ends, I reckon Nicholas Sparks has been spending a lot of his time hanging around there, swimming in the toxic soup. There has to be some such drastic explanation for the final, terrible twist in the tale.

Whatever it is, director Lasse Hallstrom may have fallen victim too. Otherwise, the man who made intelligent films like The Cider House Rules and What’s Eating Gilbert Grape? would surely have handed back the script and simply said, “Nicholas, I think you should see a doctor”.

Now, it may be that Mr Hallstrom simply fell in love with the Carolinas while filming Dear John back in the day and was mad for any chance to return. That I can understand completely.

Still and all, I feel that a man of such former talents will regret the day he signed on, when he could have shaken his head and handed back that script and said, “Nicholas, I am not insane. If I end it like this, they will laugh at me for all time.”

And we will.

Stoker
DIRECTED BY: Chan-wook Park
STARRING: Mia Wasikowska, Nicole Kidman, Matthew Goode, Dermot Mulroney
CERT: 18
CHAN-wook Park is the Korean director of violent thrillers like Old Boy and Sympathy for Lady Vengeance, very stylish stuff though overrated. Stoker is his English language debut and it’s got style and flair to burn. It’s also a right load of nonsense.

Mia Wasikowska is India Stoker, who tells us in the muttered opening narration that, well, she’s different. And indeed she is.

India’s father (Mulroney) dies in a mysterious accident on her 18th birthday. Turns out old dad had a brother that India never knew about. His name is Charlie (Goode), a right creepy little git who turns up at the funeral and decides to move in with the girl and her mother Evelyn (Kidman). Evelyn is mad with grief or drink, or more likely, just plain mad.

In any case, she soon has the hots for creepy Charlie, but Charlie has his eye elsewhere. India, a young girl whose blossoming womanhood is played out in laughable style – a fling with the high school biker, a ludicrous piano duet fantasy and a pair of new stilettos – is having a few dark thoughts of her own.

The script for Stoker, co-written by Wentworth Miller of Prison Break, has several gaping holes – like, Aunt Gwendolyn wouldn’t have gone straight to the cops in that taxi? Right. A steady hand, though, might have patched them up and made a nifty little suspense yarn.

But Park is too busy framing elegant shots, instructing the cast to be irritatingly coy at all times and to speak their trite dialogue really slowly because that gives it so… much… more… meaning. He’s waving at the film geeks, shouting, “Hey, look at me referencing Hitchcock! Cool, eh!”

No, it’s just annoying, pretentious crap.