Nights In Rodanthe (PG) 97 mins
Review by Victor Olliver - Richard Gere's latest is the sort of weepy that gets shown on daytime TV in between the over-50s life insurance ads.
The milky shots to disguise the actors' age. The softly-spoken lines so as not to worry the moths snoozing in the net curtain folds. The awful disease that draws us into a sofa tearful empathy.
Well, Nights In Rodanthe is a superior version of the kind.
But first, what of Richard Gere? At last, and not before time, his face is starting to catch up with the hair that went silver about 25-odd years ago.
Yet he's still handsome. In Rodanthe's one bedroom sex scene he concedes his maturity and spares us his behind - once a staple of the Gere vehicle.
He's 60 next year. His co-star Diane Lane is 43. They look great though he's old enough to be her biological daddy.
"Rodanthe" takes us to the Outer Banks of North Carolina, to a remote wooden inn on the sandy sea shore.
Adrienne (Lane) is running it for an old friend while she thinks about a reunion with her adulterous husband. Paul (Gere) is the solitary guest - a medical negligence case has caused him to reflect on a career-driven life.
Love slow-burns within the shack as a hurricane outside fans the embers.
There's no surprise about what will happen in this film. What matters is whether we care enough to wail.
That's largely down to the actors and they do not let us down. Lane creates an unashamed old-school mother-type. Her hairstyles are coded: when the fringe dangles she's really in a strop.
Gere is credibly self-absorbed as he was in Pretty Woman: Paul's workaholic backstory is woefully all too familar.
The out-and-out emotionalism of "Rodanthe" may amuse younger audiences. Then again "Rodanthe" is not for them.
Its values are plainly rooted in family and its eye is on the so-called silver market that will welcome the film's underlying hopeful message: "It's never too late for a second chance."
Gere and Lane, in their third film as a duo, sail serenely through a good storm and a dampish script. Verdict 3½/5