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‘A Journal for Jordan’ Review: Reflections on Love Built and Lost

The actors Michael B. Jordan and Chanté Adams bring a compelling chemistry to the screen as opposites who fall for each other.

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By Lisa Kennedy

Jordan Canedy is a wide-eyed baby with excellent lungs at the start of “A Journal for Jordan.” At the movie’s end, he’s becoming a young man, one with traits that his soldier father, Charles Monroe King, had hoped for when he began writing a yet-to-be-born Jordan advice in a notebook while stationed in Iraq.

In 2006, while on patrol in Baghdad, First Sgt. King was killed by a roadside bomb . Dana Canedy , King’s fiancé and the mother of their infant son, was then a senior editor at The New York Times. Her 2007 article “ From Father to Son, Last Words to Live By ,” led to her to write the elegant book about love, loss and legacy upon which this movie is based, and with which it shares its title.

So don’t be fooled by that touching title: The journal, in which Canedy added her own stories to King’s writing, is as much the work of a grieving mother driven to make sure her son knows the love story that brought him into the world as it is a devoted father’s guide to decency and manhood.

Denzel Washington directs this adaptation (the screenplay is by Virgil Williams) with care, respect and a deep-seated knowledge of the Black love stories that don’t make it to the big screen nearly enough. The actors Michael B. Jordan and Chanté Adams are similarly attuned, bringing a compelling chemistry as opposites who fall for each other.

In the movie, Dana meets Charles on a visit to her parents’ home near Fort Knox, Ky. Charles is chiseled, polite and oh-so good looking. He sends a gentle helping of “ma’ams” her way. She appraises him. He’s a 10-and-2 kind of driver. She reaches from the passenger side to blare the horn. Though different, their attraction is palpable. It also helps that they are both single (sort of). He’s going through a divorce, and she recently ended a relationship.

Michael B. Jordan embraces Charles’s rigorous ethos as well as his tenderness. Charles might drop for morning push-ups, but he’ll also bow his head for grace at a restaurant. He travels with push-up bars but also a sketch pad. If Dana sees a flaw, it may be Charles’s single-minded devotion to his soldiers. She has her own doubts about being a military wife.

Canedy acknowledged her edges (and curves) in her book, and Adams embodies them in her portrayal. When she begins writing her son, Jordan, her anecdotes can be frank, or frisky. She even shares a doozy of an argument, the kind that either breaks up a couple or makes them stronger.

While the movie makes it clear that Dana and Charles are successful, it doesn’t always get at the labor necessary to get them there, both as a couple and as individuals. While it’s easy to rely on the shorthand of countless wartime movies to signal Charles’s ascendancy, Dana’s own story deserves a few more beats.

A Journal for Jordan Rated PG-13 for a loving and passionate congress, salty language and brief marijuana use. Running time: 2 hours 11 minutes. In theaters.

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Sony Pictures Entertainment (SPE)

Summary A Journal for Jordan is based on the true story of First Sergeant Charles Monroe King (Jordan), a soldier deployed to Iraq who begins to keep a journal of love and advice for his infant son. Back at home, senior New York Times editor Dana Canedy (Chanté Adams) revisits the story of her unlikely, life-altering relationship with King and h ... Read More

Directed By : Denzel Washington

Written By : Virgil Williams, Charles Monroe King, Dana Canedy

A Journal for Jordan

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Michael B. Jordan

Charles king, chanté adams, dana canedy, jalon christian, robert wisdom, sgt. t.j. canedy, dad, tamara tunie, penny canedy, mom, jasmine batchelor, gwen canedy, sister, marchánt davis, mike canedy, brother, susan pourfar, vanessa aspillaga, robin, friend, grey henson, ciro, friend, johnny m. wu, manny, doorman, david wilson barnes, spencer squire, melanie nicholls-king, kaleshia, nanny, annabel o'hagan, waitress, kentucky diner, ricky tinelli, waiter, italian restaurant, samuel caleb walker, imhoff, soldier, cleveland berto, mohammed, soldier, clark jackson, dana's doctor, judy rosenblatt, talkative neighbor, critic reviews.

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A Journal for Jordan Reviews

There’s something missing that I can’t quite put my finger on. It’s a little too long and the story doesn’t feel particularly balanced. But there’s something else – something that doesn’t quite give the movie the gut-punch it needs.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/5 | Aug 16, 2022

Chante Adams' excellent performance would be the reason to even consider seeing this.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Mar 20, 2022

Its a bit of a shock, considering Washingtons track record of directing strong, dynamic stories (Antwone Fisher, The Great Debaters and, most importantly, Fences), that he would make a movie this bland and lifeless.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Feb 13, 2022

A Journal for Jordan boasts a lot of talent behind and in front of the camera, but it never catches fire dramatically.

Full Review | Jan 28, 2022

In its smaller moments, the film manages to capture some resonant emotions both in the love story and depictions of parenthood and grief.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Jan 27, 2022

Adams is a vivacious screen presence with a twinkle in her eye, and Jordan can't quite match her, unable to draw out any real inner turmoil in a character who is respectable to a fault.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Jan 23, 2022

A so-so old-fashioned military romance directed with sincerity but little curiosity by the noted actor Denzel Washington.

Full Review | Original Score: C | Jan 22, 2022

High expectations for this Michael B Jordan movie but the delivery was a little low.

Full Review | Original Score: 6/10 | Jan 21, 2022

Jordan and Adams are good together, but struggle with the heaviness of the saccharin dialogue, and A Journal For Jordan plays it safe on the politics too.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Jan 21, 2022

Both charismatic leads do a fine job in the circumstances, but as the film flits back and forth in time, some of the dialogue is laughably feeble.

A languidly paced, fatally earnest, 130-minute romantic drama that extols the virtues of duty, sacrifice and unthinking patriotism.

The chemistry between Jordan and Adams never gels (Charles appears slightly annoyed by Dana throughout), and there are a plethora of superfluous scenes that simply die on camera.

A Journal For Jordan is probably better suited to the page than the screen.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Jan 20, 2022

Visually, the style is basic. Under the surface the movie has complexity enough to handle a story whose timeline - a zigzag of points between 1998 and 2018 - is just one potential tangle.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Jan 20, 2022

Uninspired and ultimately forgettable.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Jan 19, 2022

The romance feels drawn out for a feature that runs for over 2 hours. There's little drama or suspense to the proceedings. Moreover, it seems ambiguous as to its message about war.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Jan 19, 2022

Director Denzel Washington and his stars do their best with this bland, shallow and awkwardly structured film.

The film drags in spots and yet fails to linger on what the audience was waiting for--eye candy. This ultimately is empty calories.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Jan 16, 2022

It's well told, tidy, and laudable.

Full Review | Jan 7, 2022

With little regard from deploying much in the way of stylistic showmanship, director Denzel Washington seems far more content in turning this memoir into, simply, a movie.

Full Review | Original Score: 6/10 | Jan 6, 2022