These letters are the only contact that John and Savannah have through much of the film, so they become the backbone of the movie.

He promises to come back to her, she promises to wait, and they both promise to write. This applies not only to Seyfried, but to Henry Thomas, otherwise moving as the father of an autistic child whom Savannah nannys, and to the always reliable Richard Jenkins as John's emotionally distant father.Īfter two blissful weeks at the beach (and the first in an endless series of wispy montages), Savannah heads back to school while John is deployed to undisclosed overseas locations.

His co-star is sincere and able enough as a young woman caught up in a whirlwind romance, but no one looks good trying to play off a blank wall. It's on those beaches, while on leave from his tour of duty as an Army Special Forces sergeant, that he meets the doe-eyed, golden-hearted Savannah (Amanda Seyfried). While his abs perform admirably in the many surfboard-toting scenes on the beaches of Charleston, S.C., his line readings are similarly stiff and flat. Unfortunately, there's a lot more flatlining in this movie than the cast.Ĭhief among the lifeless is the performance of Channing Tatum as the titular John. So when I confirm that someone does die in Dear John, it should be no more surprising than revealing that not everyone survives a Shakespearean tragedy. In fact for a writer known for soulful romance, Sparks displays a prodigious morbid streak throughout his work. To say that someone dies in a film based on a Nicholas Sparks novel hardly qualifies as a spoiler: Tragic, untimely deaths are the author's stock in trade, particularly those that lead his characters to re-evaluate the nature of life and how to live it - or love and how to give it.

Dear john nicholas sparks movie