Based on the true story of First Sergeant Charles Monroe King, who wrote a journal for his son with advice on how to live incase he was killed while serving in Iraq.
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Dana Canedy had just given up on love and finding a boyfriend when a trip home for her father’s birthday sees her meeting Charles. Just might be something that he set up, her father was a former sergeant in the army and had taken a shine to Charles who spent quite a bit of time when he was home with her parents.
The thing is thought Dana had never wanted to actually be with an army man, mainly because she then expected him to behave in the way her father did. Constantly cheating on her Mother and being a little bit violent at times. She tried to resist but was totally drawn towards Charles and vice versa. He had been married before with a daughter and was going through a divorce.
Dana invited him to New York as he had never actually been before and one of the weekends his is on leave he goes to visit her, before this they had been talking quite a lot on the phone. It felt as though they were going to just go for it but it wasn’t really that simple. However, they do have sex and then get together which is tough on Dana when he then goes away. She does not instantly trust him and finds it rather difficult to believe him when he is away.
Regardless of all that she does fall in love with him, the main issue though I actually had with it and the film on the whole was that the passion wasn’t really that great between them and we really needed that more to care fully about the characters. She begins writing to their son though after his death and linking in a little bit with the journal Charles had written.
The story moves backwards and forwards at times to show different moments and we get a teenage Jordan who really wants to know more about his father and had been struggling at school with some abuse. The journal is then open to help him and he demands to get closer to his memory.
A Journal for Jordan had the potential to be a fantastic film, which just falls short of that expectation. The final scene in Washington was extremely powerful though and I did find myself filling up and starting to cry, it was so lovely and heartbreaking all at the same time and somewhat a fitting tribute not only to Charles Monroe King but all of the other men and women who were killed in the Iraq war.
Michael B. Jordan is an actor who I throughly enjoy watching and I do like that he takes on different types of roles, it was nice to see the softer side during different scenes in this film. Chante Adams was decent enough as the woman trying to hold herself together at times and battle against her emotions, taking on a person who had achieved so much in her professional life while dealing with a lot of grief.
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