It’s worth noting how startling that line plays here, when that word has been so devalued by Americans unfit to claim it as a label. He serves because he wanted “the discipline” the Army had to offer his life, and because he’s a real “patriot.” “I love my country.” The script and the star let us see Charles as ramrod straight, chivalrous and “corny,” a man of few words “unless I’ve got something to say,” unpolished in his ratty “grandpa” tennis shows and ignorance of what the phrase “off Broadway” means, but the sort of straight arrow father figure who passes on “live by your convictions” because that’s the way he lived. “Journal for Jordan” may hang on the hook of “fallen father writes timeless advice to his son” hook, but it’s about “How Dana Canedy Fell for Charles Monroe King” - from set-ups (Dad even provides her “excuse” for asking for a ride) to slow-moving courtship to love, sex and a baby. But he’s into art, painting in the style of his French favorites - the pointillism of Georges Seurat, the impressionism of Claude Monet.ĭana has a New York apartment, a New York career and that hard-won New York sophistication, and Adams lets us see both a ravenous attraction to this new hunk her dad’s introduced her to and her reluctance to fall for someone so potentially like her father. King always introduces himself that way, always says “ma’am,” and is blunt about picking the Army as a career. Whatever the messaging and emphasis of the memoir it’s based on, the movie reaching theaters needed a serious re-edit.Īdams plays Dana Canedy, a hard-driving New York Times reporter and Army brat with “daddy issues” who nevertheless lets Daddy ( Robert Wisdom) put a handsome, courtly and honorable “tanker” that he trained in her path, plainly match-making for the 30ish, sophisticated Big City Dana.įirst Sgt. That makes it play longer than its two hour and 11 minute runtime, and makes it that rarest of movie “unicorns” - a misstep by director Denzel Washington. Jordan and another feather in the cap of Chanté Adams (“Bad Hair, “The Photograph”) who plays the single mom left behind to raise that son and pass that journal on to him when he was old enough to understand.īut it’s an ungainly film that loses focus time and again, drifting off to indulge its stars with extraneous scenes and badly-handled or simply unnecessary story threads. It’s a glossy, sentimental star vehicle for Michael B. His only quirks are a poor fashion sense, a prior divorce and an endless love for his troops.“A Journal for Jordan” is a sweet, sad holiday weeper about a soldier who kept a diary filled with life lessons for his newborn son, just in case “the worst” happened. It also leaves King an unblemished figure, supremely noble. Though it might be called “A Journal for Jordan,” the film mostly focuses on the parents and leaves only as a coda the son's story. The final, teary scene is also undercut when we're told the austere location was completely made up for dramatic purposes. Watching Canedy give birth while alternating with King simultaneously presiding over a funeral for three soldiers in Iraq is laying it on a little thick. The screenplay by Virgil Williams is based on Canedy's best-seller but takes some melodramatic liberties, often unnecessarily.
King only met Jordan once before he was killed by a roadside bomb in 2006. “It's all right for boys to cry,” is one thing dad writes to his baby boy. “Tell him who you are, what you believe in,” she encourages. While abroad, he writes in a journal for his newborn son, Jordan. They must overcome separation - she's in New York, he's in Kentucky - and war, when he's deployed to Iraq while she is pregnant. Their chemistry on screen is beautifully evident, a shy wistfulness that roars into lust and adoration. Jordan takes on the role of King and rising star Chanté Adams plays Canedy.
“Men are luxuries, not necessities,” she is fond of saying. She's focused on her career at The New York Times when we meet her, uninterested in a long-term commitment.
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