Aimee Teargarden | Through the Shattered Lens

After her father dies in an accident, teenage Nicole (Aimee Teargarden) is sent to Santa Cruz for the summer by her mother. In Santa Cruz, Nicole meets her grandmother, Sue (Patricia Richardson), for the first time. At first, Nicole is bitter and angry and doesn’t want a thing to do with Santa Cruz or its culture of surfing. That changes when she learns about her grandfather, Max (Lance Henriksen). Max was a legendary surfer who went to Vietnam and never returned. When Nicole comes across Max’s old map of surfing spots, she and her friend Kayla (Alicia Ziegler) go on a journey that leads to Nicole not only appreciating surfing but also discovering the truth about her grandfather.

Beautiful Wave is pretty predictable and, at first, Nicole is so sullen that she can sometimes be difficult to take even if she does have a good reason for not being in a cheerful mood. I liked the idea of Nicole and Kayla going on a journey together but I didn’t like that they brought two knucklehead surfers with them. What could have been a celebration of sisterhood instead became a film about two women having to deal with two idiots.

Beautiful Wave still won me over, with its gorgeous beach footage and its story of paying respect to the past and discovering your own roots. Even with the two idiot surfers getting in the way, I appreciated the way the film showed the bond between Nicole and Kayla. The ending was heartwarming, even if it did raise more questions than it answered. There are some movies that you have to be in the right mood for and I guess my mood was the right one for Beautiful Wave.

Love and Honor tells a simple but effective story.

Taking place in 1969 and opening with footage of the launch of Apollo 11, Love and Honor tells the story of two soldiers, Wright (Liam Hemsworth) and Joyner (Austin Stowell). Wright and Joyner are serving in Viet Nam together and, even as the war grows more and more unpopular in the U.S., both of them remain true believers.

Shortly before they’re scheduled to take a week of R&R in Hong Kong, Joyner receives a break-up letter from his girlfriend, Jane (Aimee Teargarden). Joyner decided to use his R&R time to fly back to the U.S. and ask Jane to marry him. As Joyner explains it, as long as he returns to his unit at the end of the week, he won’t be charged with going AWOL. Wright impulsively decides to accompany him.

What happens next shouldn’t surprise anyone who has ever seen a film set in the 60s. Wright and Joyner returns to the U.S. and discover that Jane has fallen in with a bunch of activists — led by the smug Peter (Chris Lowell) — who spend all of their time organizing rallies and publishing an underground newspaper. While Joyner pursues Jane, Wright falls in love with Candace (Teresa Palmer). In order to impress Candace, Wright claims that he and Joyner are actually deserters as opposed to just being two soldiers on R&R. While Wright’s lie impresses Jane’s new friends, it also proves to be a lot of trouble once Peter starts to get jealous.

Love and Honor, which came and went without much notice last March, is a surprisingly sweet and likable film. Liam Hemsworth and Teresa Palmer have a lot of chemistry and Austin Stowell is so likable as Joyner that it’s easy to overlook the fact that his character’s story arc doesn’t really make much sense. Finally, Chris Lowell is properly hissable as the film’s self-righteous villain.

I imagine that some politically minded viewers might be a bit annoyed with the fact that all of the film’s political activists are portrayed as being shallow, flaky, and hypocritical. (Then again, some would argue that this was the most realistic part of the entire film…) Love and Honor uses the politics of the 60s as a plot device but it never explores any of those issues in any sort of depth. But, to be honest, who cares? Sometimes, a romance is just a romance and we, as viewers, are all the better for it.