And that drama often lets down the film’s few strengths, like the complex character of Dana, rendered silly and screechy with awkward regularity. Instead, like many other concepts that crop up in the film’s middling middle act, it’s only deployed when still more drama is needed. The film attempts to mine a compelling tension between Charles’ sense of duty and his love for his men and his relationship with Dana, but it’s never fully fleshed out. Important characters and subplots are picked up and dropped at random - including, but not limited to, Dana’s parents, Dana’s siblings, Dana’s job, Charles’ first child, Charles’ career aspirations - and only circled back to when there needs to be some outside drama. ![]() And yet, if the best thing you can say about a film so stuck on its romance that “it was nice when they went to Central Park,” perhaps other avenues need to be explored, ASAP. Washington shot the film in and around New York City last spring, and while Dana and Charles are often stuck inside her apartment, moments in which they venture out and around the city help open up their love story. ![]() That we know it “works out” insofar as they eventually have a cute kid together doesn’t help, and neither does the lingering knowledge that something bad is going to happen (at some point?) and pull them apart forever. So, what’s the letter? Where’s the journal? And who exactly would opt to spend precious time with their child detailing the time Mommy and Daddy did it with the drapes open?Īnd that’s what we get for the majority of the film’s running time: a fraught love story between two people who probably shouldn’t have to work so hard to just be together. Uh, right? And yet the film fails to adhere to this very basic storytelling conceit, as Williams’ script soon opts to unpack a fraught romance that few people would feel comfortable sharing with their offspring. ![]() The implication is as clear as anything in Virgil Williams’ fumbling script: She’s penning said letter to give to the cute kiddo along with the titular journal, all in a bid to explain the love story from which he sprang. No, it’s not what you’re expecting, and what it is isn’t very good, either.īased (apparently?) on Dana Canedy’s memoir, Washington’s film kicks off with a heartbroken and recently widowed Dana (Chanté Adams) writing a heartfelt letter to her young son. Jordan) a soldier deployed to Iraq who begins to keep a journal of love and advice for his infant son” - but the end result is a baffling feature that so desperately wants to be an entirely different film that audiences might worry they’ve stepped into the wrong theater. ![]() Denzel Washington’s “ A Journal for Jordan” certainly has a straightforward enough premise - per its own synopsis, it’s “based on the true story of First Sergeant Charles Monroe King ( Michael B. “It wasn’t what I was expecting” is perhaps the cheapest piece of criticism that can be lobbed at a work of art, but in the case of, oh, a fact-based melodrama that pulls from both a) real life and b) the memoir written about it, some basic expectations are inevitable.
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