The Lucky One

The Lucky One (2012) is about a marine who finds a photograph in Iraq. On a patrol Logan sees a photograph of a woman on the ground. He takes a few steps to pick it up, and at that moment a shell lands where he had been standing. He keeps it. Back from his third tour he is traumatised; he cannot sleep and reacts to sudden noise. He decides to find the woman in the photograph. A lighthouse in the background leads him to Louisiana. Beth runs a boarding kennel. He cannot manage to tell her why he came and takes a job there. The film runs on that unsaid thing; what will happen when she learns it hangs over everything. It is adapted from Nicholas Sparks's novel; he is the writer who set the template for American romantic drama and this is one of his adaptations. Zac Efron stars and trained with the military for the part. The second strand is Beth's ex husband, a deputy in the parish who uses custody of their son to apply pressure. The Louisiana landscape builds the visual language: swamp, trees, river. The storm and the bridge in the final section are the genre's habitual close. Scott Hicks directed. Critics disliked it and it did well commercially. It runs 101 minutes. Good for: romantic drama, Sparks adaptations, and undemanding viewing. Less good for: the story is entirely predictable and the trauma is treated superficially.