“The Lucky One”: We Fought Iraq for This?

Yet another Nicholas Sparks movie that exploits the Iraq war. Hasn’t America been through enough?

Zac Efron. Peering deeply into the moral and emotional complexities of human existence and romantic entanglements, or something.Photo courtesy of <a href="http://theluckyonemovie.warnerbros.com/index.html">Warner Bros.</a>

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

The Lucky One
Warner Bros. Pictures
101 minutes

A lot of craptacular things came out of the Iraq War. The torture at Abu Ghraib. The chaos and the casualties. The deep distrust in government. Carlos Mencia’s stint on the USO tour circuit.

And then there’s The Lucky One—a perfect storm of middle-school daydreams and unintended parody.

The movie tells the love story of a handsome, Dr. Seuss-quoting Iraq War veteran and a beautiful dog-motel proprietress. Sgt. Logan Thibault (Zac Efron) is a Marine on his third tour of duty. The morning after a night raid, he spies a photo of an American blonde in a pile of rubble and retrieves it from the rubbish—an act of curiosity that serendipitously causes him to avoid an incoming RPG. After experiencing numerous other brushes with explosive death, Logan comes to the conclusion that the photo kept him alive through its magic, good-looking-girl-I’ve-never-met-before protective aura. So, after returning home in one piece, a melancholy and shell-shocked Logan makes the 1480-mile hike—on foot—from Colorado to rural North Carolina in his effort to track down this mystery woman/guardian angel.

He finds her in about fifteen minutes.

Thus commences The Lucky One‘s full tilt boogie of emotional manipulation.

In case you didn’t already infer, The Lucky One is based on a Nicholas Sparks book of the same name. Nicholas Sparks (not to be confused with the nineteenth century Ottawan timber magnate) is the R. L. Stine of formulaic, hella-bankable romantic novels—best-sellers that frequently get turned into movies with big budgets and top-billed stars. If you’ve sat through any of these adaptations—Message in a Bottle, Nights in Rodanthe, The Notebook, Dear John, A Walk to Remember, The Last Song—then you know what you’re in for this time around.

As in 2010’s Dear John, the central character in The Lucky One is an gentle soul who, when he’s not mowing down insurgents overseas, is busy falling in love on American soil. “Why did I make it out when so many guys didn’t?” Logan narrates. During The Lucky One‘s hour and forty minutes, the audience finds out why: His destiny is to win the heart of, and make sweet, clammy love to, the kindly dog-motel owner named Beth Clayton (Atlas Shrugged: Part I star Taylor Schilling). And to help take care of her precocious son Ben (Riley Thomas Stewart). And to lend a strapping hand caring for their farmland. And to help Beth fend off the violent advances of her jealous boozehound ex-husband Keith (Jay R. Ferguson).

Basically, any ol’ trope that will keep him the hell away from feeling sad and killing Iraqis.

The beautiful thing about reviewing a movie like this is that it sort of pans itself; all I had to do above was paraphrase the synopsis, and you already know whether it’s a good idea to pay to see it.

So I’ll make this quick:

The film’s themes of loss, war, and fate are irreparably dulled by a one-two punch of crummy dialogue and zombified acting. “You should be kissed every minute of every hour of every day,” Logan moans to Beth during an adrenalized make-out sesh. Miraculously, she is indeed turned on by these proceedings. “Finding that photo was like finding an angel in hell,” Logan later confesses to his dream woman because, you know, war is hell and she’s an angel.

The one exception to the uniformly bad emoting is Blythe Danner, who plays Beth’s wily grandma. Unfortunately, she’s relegated to doing little more than dropping ripostes in a Southern accent.

Aussie director Scott Hicks, who’s been in a creative freefall since helming 1996’s Shine, shows off his ability to pull unintentional laughs out of solemn scenarios. The depictions of PTSD have the emotional wallop of a throw pillow. The film’s war sequences are so halfheartedly staged that they look like Green Day music videos. And in a pivotal scene in which Beth tearfully reminisces about her dead brother, the corniness of her emotional breakdown sooner inspires chuckles than pity.

It’s the romantic drama to nowhere. By all means, [insert obvious unLucky joke here.]

The Lucky One gets a wide release on Friday, April 20. The film is rated PG-13 for some sexuality and violence. Click here for local showtimes and tickets.

Click here for more movie and TV features from Mother Jones.


If you buy a book using a Bookshop link on this page, a small share of the proceeds supports our journalism.

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate