Movie review: Dear John

Oh, the regret! Oh, the thwarted, sublimated, smoldering passion! (Oh, the numismatics!!!)

From Nicholas Sparks, writer of Nights in Rodanthe (2008) and The Notebook (2004), and Lasse Hallström, director of My Life as a Dog (1985), Chocolat (2000), and The Hoax (2006), comes the bittersweet and moderately satisfying screen romance Dear John.

Our story finds Army Special Forces grunt John Tyree (Channing Tatum) diving off the deep end for college-student-on-break Savannah Curtis (Amanda Seyfried) -- and I mean this literally, as Savannah's male companion (played by Friday Night Lights alum Scott Porter) inadvertently knocks her purse into the drink from the railing of a South Carolina oceanfront pier.

Tyree is on two-weeks leave from oveseas duty. He and the lissome Savannah take to one another like two components of an epoxy mixture that, once blended, become all gooey and clinging. At the neighborhood beachfront barbecue she invites him to that evening, he gets beered up enough to ask her out to dinner the next night; while making his leave, he trips over the campfire. (Foreshadowing? Endearing tomfoolery? You make the call.)

"Your left earlobe reminds me of the scent of compost on a hot summer's day."

Two weeks is little enough time for a pair of young lovers to become acquainted -- she with his checkered, violent past; he with her straight-laced, high-toned humanitarianism -- but there's more in the mix, including a large dose of Tyree's socially-dysfunctional father (Richard Jenkins) and a soupçon of Savannah's friend Tim (Henry Thomas), whose autistic son bestows his own esoteric nod of approval on Tyree.

Our romance is couched in terms of a soldier's story (and a soldier's girlfriend's story); thus the bulk of the narrative finds Tyree and Savannah loving each other from afar via snail mail, while he's doing his soldierly special ops thing in various classified global hot spots. They both believe Tyree will be home in six months, which is the remainder of his enlistment obligation. But the events of 9/11 intervene, leading him to entertain the possibility of re-upping for another tour of duty. When the time comes, will he choose love and self-interest, or honor and self-sacrifice? (It would be a pretty boring movie -- I mean, even MORE boring -- if he chose the former.)

After an all-too-brief weekend leave, Tyree and Savannah are once again separated by Fate (a Favored Tool of romantic novelists) -- and this time it could be forever.

"Bill, bill, bill, Dear John letter, bill ..."

Tatum and Seyfried look good together onscreen and convey a believable attraction, but the most moving relationship story here is the one between Tyree and his father. Their long-standing alienation begins to break down under Savannah's leavening influence. Finally, across a hospital gurney, they achieve an emotional breakthrough in a scene that marks the film's tear-jerking high point.

As for the romance between Tyree and Savannah: let's just say it becomes an increasingly troubled one, while a series of improbably tragic events intervene to keeping them ridiculously apart. (Most of the time.)

There's a metaphorical numismatic-themed subplot running through the narrative that ought to interest -- well -- numismatists, I guess. As for the rest of us filmgoers:

"Long stretches of boring, with occasional flashes of scary." - Tyree, re. Special Forces duty