Movie Review: "Safe Haven"

"Safe Haven": B+.  It was a dark and stormy night. (I have always wanted to begin a post with those words.) Before the opening credits we see Katie (Julianne Hough) in the driving rain, narrowly escaping the clutches of Boston police detective Kevin Tierney (David Lyons) by ducking into a cross country bus headed for Atlanta. We are not sure why the cop is after her, but by the time he reviews the depot surveillance camera footage to figure out what bus she took, she is long gone. She could be anywhere between Beantown and Hotlanta.

Katie gets off when the bus stops for a short break in Southport, an idyllic fishing village on the North Carolina coast, and never gets back on. Just as Hough's character was in Rock Of Ages (reviewed here on June 25), she is instantly the hottest chick in town, a fact that doesn't go unnoticed by Alex (Josh Duhamel), the boyishly handsome widower who owns the town's general store, inexplicably called "Ivan's." Josh still hasn't adjusted to life without his wife, but he is so busy raising his two lovable kids and running his store that he has little time for self pity.

Before a couple of days go by, Katie has landed a job as a server at the popular diner on the dock, and has taken up residence in a fixer-upper cottage remotely tucked away in the woods outside of town. Her need for floor boards, paint, brushes and other assorted tools and accessories results in regular trips to Ivan's. Alex's little daughter, who was a baby when her mother died, adores Katie, and the feeling is mutual. Katie and Alex are obviously interested in each other, but they play it cool. Alex goes out of his way to help her order paint from a supplier, showing her samples and decorating magazines, and then finally placing the order. After she leaves the store, his Uncle Roger (Red West), who functions as a combination store helper and kindly agitator, asks him, "Since when do we sell paint?"

The uncle's counterpart is Jo (Cobie Smulders), a young neighbor who periodically pays visits to Katie in the ramshackle cabin. When Katie rejects a clumsy effort by Alex to give her a bicycle, Jo urges her to accept it, stating that such benevolence is the way people do things in the South. "He's giving you a bike, not a kidney" is the best line in the movie.

Things pick up when the Boston detective, Tierney, gets wind of Katie's whereabouts. Tierney is one of the creepiest film cops I can remember since Ray Liotta played Officer Pete Davis in the 1992 thriller, Unlawful Entry. He is like a dog on a bone, reminding viewers of The Fugitive's Lieutenant Gerard, making it his undying quest to track down his prey. Will he find Katie? Will Alex and Katie ever do more than flirt with each other? When the weather turns cold will Katie have anything else to wear besides those short shorts she's kept on throughout the warm season? We find out the answers to two of those questions before the film ends.

There are two big surprises in Safe Haven. The first occurs about midway through the movie when we find out the details of why Katie is on the run. The truth is cleverly and slowly revealed over the course of a couple of scenes, including flashbacks. The second surprise, at the very end of the story, is a real mind blower which blindsided me, as I had no inkling that the astonishing revelation was about to occur.

The big dramatic finish, which occurs about ten minutes before the story's end, is not merely unpersuasive -- it is preposterous. The occurrences happening before our eyes are played out with only a modicum of reality. This almost ruined the movie for me, were it not for that second surprise I referenced in the immediately preceding paragraph. It is almost as if the script writers knew they had a weak ending, but instead of rewriting it they sought redemption by making the final scene a "holy cow" experience.

Safe Haven is the eighth movie based on a Nicholas Sparks novel. Now I have seen three of them, 2004's The Notebook (rated a pre-blog B+ by me), and 2008's Nights In Rodanthe (C+) being the others. Bashing Nicholas Sparks apparently is de rigueur among the cognoscenti of cinema critics. He is charged with predictability and shallowness. Sparks doesn't need a fellow Domer to stick up for him, but here is my quick take on his product. If I were going to a movie based on one of his books and expected a Doctor Zhivago or a Romeo And Juliet, I might share the movie snobs' sentiments. But just like you can't order a MGD and hope it tastes like a Guinness, with a Sparks movie I am mostly looking for a two hour entertaining escape vehicle. There is no question that Safe Haven could have been better, but the film makers got most of it right, and save for that "big dramatic finish," it might have been deserving of a B+. Is getting to watch Julianne Hough in a lead role enough to keep it from slipping to a B? Is the Pope Catholic?