The Lucky One
“One photograph brought him home. Now he has to find the woman in it.”
Director
Scott Hicks
Release
4 May 2012
Runtime
101 Minutes
Certificate
12A
Synopsis
Marine Sergeant Logan Thibault is serving in Iraq when he notices a photograph lying on the ground. He picks it up. Moments later, circumstances convince him that stopping to retrieve the photograph may have saved his life. Unable to identify its owner, Logan keeps it. The woman in the picture becomes his good-luck charm through the remainder of his deployment. When Logan eventually returns home, adjusting to civilian life proves difficult. He decides to search for the woman whose photograph accompanied him through the war. That search leads him to Beth. But when Logan finally meets her, explaining why he has travelled so far isn't as easy as he imagined. Instead, he takes a job at the kennel run by Beth and her grandmother Ellie. Logan gradually becomes part of their lives, developing a bond with Beth's son Ben and eventually with Beth herself. But Beth has complications of her own, particularly her difficult relationship with Ben's father, Keith. And Logan still hasn't told her the complete truth. The photograph brought him to Beth. Whether their relationship can survive its real history becomes another question entirely.
The Movie Trailer
The Lucky One is a romantic drama starring Zac Efron as Logan Thibault, a U.S. Marine who returns home from his third deployment in Iraq carrying a photograph he believes somehow kept him alive.
Logan doesn't know the woman in the picture.
He doesn't even know her name.
But after surviving the war, he becomes determined to find her.
His search eventually leads him to Beth, played by Taylor Schilling, a woman living with her young son and grandmother and helping run the family's dog kennel.
Logan takes a job there without immediately explaining why he came.
As the two grow closer, the photograph that brought Logan into Beth's life becomes a secret that could pull them apart. Warner's synopsis confirms the central story: Logan finds the photograph in Iraq, tracks down Beth, and takes a job at her family's kennel.
THE PHOTOGRAPH
One Picture Gives Logan Something to Come Home For
To anyone else, it's simply a photograph of a woman they don't know.
To Logan, it becomes something considerably more important.
After finding the picture while serving in Iraq, he begins associating it with the moments he survives.
Whether the photograph genuinely brings him luck almost doesn't matter.
Logan believes it does.
And after returning home, finding the woman in the picture gives him a purpose at a time when returning to ordinary life proves more difficult than he expected.
The photograph may have helped bring Logan home.
Finding Beth gives him a reason to work out what home means now.
LOGAN & BETH
A Romance Built Around a Secret
Logan knows something about his relationship with Beth that she doesn't.
He didn't enter her life by accident.
He searched for her.
That secret hangs over everything that develops between them.
Beth initially sees a quiet former Marine looking for work. As Logan proves dependable and forms a connection with Ben, her initial caution begins to disappear.
Their relationship develops naturally.
This makes Logan's failure to explain the photograph increasingly difficult.
The longer he waits, the harder the truth becomes to tell.
STARTING AGAIN
Coming Home Doesn't Mean the War Is Immediately Over
Logan survives his deployment, but The Lucky One doesn't treat returning home as though everything instantly goes back to normal.
The man who comes back isn't exactly the man who left.
His experiences have changed him, and reconnecting with ordinary life takes time.
Beth and her family unexpectedly give Logan somewhere to belong.
Working at the kennel provides routine. His friendship with Ben gives him responsibility outside himself. His relationship with Beth offers the possibility of a future rather than simply surviving the past.
Logan went looking for the woman in a photograph because he wanted to thank her.
What he finds is the chance to begin again.