Things aren’t looking good for Denzel Washington’s “A Journal For Jordan.” It currently has a 27 on Metacritic and a 33% on Rotten Tomatoes. It’s set for a Christmas Day release and it may very well be on its way to bombing at the box-office.
The film is the “true story of Dana Canedy’s fiancé, First Sergeant Charles Monroe King, who began to write what would become a two-hundred-page journal for his son in case he did not make it home from the war in Iraq. He was killed by a roadside bomb on October 14, 2006. His son, Jordan, was seven months old. The film has the son, all grown up, looking back on his father’s life.”
I sounded the alarm on this film when test-screenings were turning disastrous late in the fall. The last movie Washington directed, “Fences,” ended up garnering him a Best Actor nomination, a Best Picture nod as well as a Best Supporting Actress win for Viola Davis.
If the movie is as rough as some in the industry seem to fear, that teaser may have been less of a marketing campaign and more of a public plea for somebody to finally take the damn thing.