Safe Haven

Director Lasse Hallström followed his hit adaptation of Salmon Fishing in the Yemen with this slick, solidly acted but daftly plotted romance based on the novel by Nicholas Sparks (The Notebook). Julianne Hough stars as Katie, a "person of interest" in a crime case, who flees Boston and the cop (David Lyons) obsessively hunting her. She holes up in a sleepy coastal town where, predictably, she falls for the hunky Alex (Josh Duhamel), a widower with kids who runs the local store. But Katie's bubble of bliss is eventually burst when the pursuing policeman - so sweatily psychotic that you wouldn't be surprised if he had "nutjob" tattooed on his forehead - manages to hunt her down. The film is over-egged, overlong, and boasts a final plot twist that may convince on the page, but fails to do so on screen. That's a shame, because there is some early promise; it's just aspects of the delivery that ultimately let it down.