Rating: PG-13, for some sexuality, partial nudity, and some war and sports action.
Tweens may swoon at the very sight of Scott Eastwood, son of Clint, who eerily resembles his father in his young, hunky Rawhide days. The fact that Eastwood is either riding a horse or a bull or conducting himself with cowboy courtliness makes the similarity especially uncanny. Tweens and older are also the suitable age for the romantic element of this Nicholas Sparks-novel fantasy about beautiful but extremely different people who fall for each other, but whose love is probably doomed. Eastwood plays a professional bull rider who insists he’s only staying in this dangerous game to keep his mom’s ranch afloat. Britt Robertson is the pretty art history major at Wake Forest University who’s headed to New York for a gallery internship after graduation. They enjoy a little partial nudity prior to their artfully lighted, tastefully photographed shower sex. Eastwood’s character also suffers serious injuries from some ornery bulls, which are difficult to watch. (Although the meanest and most vindictive one of all, Rango, seems to have been named after a delightful, animated movie starring Johnny Depp as a talking lizard.) A parallel plot involving flashbacks to a young couple during World War II features some violence during battle scenes and some serious conversations about infertility. In the present day, there’s also some language and collegiate drunkenness.
