*SPOILER ALERT*
(2013. dir: Lasse Hallstrom) Welcome to Nicholas Sparks' world, where destiny guides wounded soul-mates across untold miles to find guaranteed and unadulterated bliss gazing into one another's eyes. Where dead folks walk around in corporeal bodies to act as guardian angels, bringing the recalcitrant (because I've been so hurt before!) lovers together.
(OK, answer me this: if you found out that your good friend and confidante was actually your new lover's dead wife... first of all, did it seem strange to you that nobody else ever saw her but you? How is it you never actually mentioned your new best friend to your lover or anyone else in the tiny, tiny fishing village in which you now live where everyone knows everyone? But, OK, let's say you didn't, and now you get to the point where the truth is revealed: your best friend is, indeed, the beloved, dead wife of your new love. Do you, as they do in Nicholas Sparks world, say, "Ah, the universe is working in total harmony to guide me into new love and happiness! Sunshine and roses all around." Or is it more likely you'd be like, "Holy FUCK! DEAD people are WALKING AROUND. I could have reached out and touched her. She sat in my freaking KITCHEN, man. I'm going to scrub everything with antiseptic. Maybe I should hang rosaries? Does that only help if you're Catholic?" Seriously, if you had verbal and continuing intercourse with a dead person, it would change everything about the way you lived. It would pull the rug out from beneath so many certainties that we hold to be self-evident that you would no longer be able to live in the world in the same glib, unthinking way we take for granted. Plus, everyone would decide you're crazy, because that's just easier than having to rethink one's entire paradigm. So no sunshine and roses for you, Petunia.
Along those lines, look at this: you've finally escaped your abusive husband, a man so fixated on tracking you down and reclaiming you that he destroyed his life to do it. You escaped him by turning his own gun against him and watching him bleed out on the dock in front of your new boyfriend's waterfront home. Once the universe has provided incontrovertible proof that the human personality survives death, proof in the form of an ex-wife so driven by love for her family that she could not let go the mortal coil until she saw them safely fitted with an appropriate help-meet, how are you ever going to sleep again, waiting for that ex-husband to come back? If love drives a ghost to solid actions on the physical plane, what will grasping, compulsive hatred do? How are you ever going to look in a mirror again without dreading to see his veangeful grin over your shoulder? I believe I can say with some certainty that your nights of peaceful sleeping are over.)
The ghost business (which obviously Sparks didn't think through properly) aside, the big shock here is that this romantic claptrap is actually pretty good, if you can withstand the hogwasheries that crush the truth from almost any Hollywood romance. Hallstrom has a handle on it, using music and editing to particular advantage. The leads are good enough company (I'm always surprised that Josh Duhamel is as good as he is, I guess because he always makes movies I could care less about), and there's a tense subplot that keeps the thing moving. In fact, the two best things about it are the way Hallstrom tricks us, in a good way, into thinking the she-hero's back-story is different than it actually is, and the reveal is ultimately very satisfying. The other thing is David Lyons' outstanding performance as an obsessed cop. This guy generally does network television, so we hardly ever get to see him at his best, but he really shows his colors here, and he's fantastic. My favorite is the moment when he says, "I found you." It's, all at once, heart-breaking and bone-chilling.
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