This story of a young mother of two son's whose husband is missing and presumed dead in the Korean War touches your heart. Jeanne Holman (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio)hits a drifter, Jack McCloud (Patrick Swayze)with her car on the way to a picnic. Later she finds him sleeping on a bench with his leg in a cast and insists that he stay at her house until his leg is better. The two boys; Tommy (Joseph Mozzello) and Gunny (Seth Mumy) gradually come to care for Jack and Jack cares for the family.
The lesson, "instead of wishing for things to make you happy; wish to be happy with what you have" is such an important truth in today's life but one that is difficult to remember when we all want what the neighbor has! The movie set - of brand new developments with thousands of houses exactly alike and looking very bare because trees have not had time to grow yet - is a nostalgic setting from that time in history.
Patrick Swayze as Jack McCloud, is good in this part of a drifter who has stumbled into the life of Jeanne Holman right when she needed friendship, support and understanding. It seems that a lot of Swayze's characters have an elusive quality of melancholy, of an acceptance that there is something special between two people that can't be defined or captured;looked at closely; or held and kept safe like a firefly in a quart jar. Jack McCloud is one of these characters along with Jed Eckart (Red Dawn), Johnny Castle (Dirty Dancing), Sam Wheat (Ghost), Ms. Vida Boheme (To Wong Foo...), Ben Clifton (Forever Lulu /Along for the Ride), Max Lowe (City of Joy) and even Allan Quatermain (King Solomon's Mines). Swayze's character Jack Charles of Father Hood was open, brash, funny and most importantly - hopeful who learned to love his children. Donnie Darko's Jim Cunningham (Swayze) was a snake-oil salesman who under it all was really slime with real no depth of any kind being developed in that character.
The lesson, "instead of wishing for things to make you happy; wish to be happy with what you have" is such an important truth in today's life but one that is difficult to remember when we all want what the neighbor has! The movie set - of brand new developments with thousands of houses exactly alike and looking very bare because trees have not had time to grow yet - is a nostalgic setting from that time in history.
Patrick Swayze as Jack McCloud, is good in this part of a drifter who has stumbled into the life of Jeanne Holman right when she needed friendship, support and understanding. It seems that a lot of Swayze's characters have an elusive quality of melancholy, of an acceptance that there is something special between two people that can't be defined or captured;looked at closely; or held and kept safe like a firefly in a quart jar. Jack McCloud is one of these characters along with Jed Eckart (Red Dawn), Johnny Castle (Dirty Dancing), Sam Wheat (Ghost), Ms. Vida Boheme (To Wong Foo...), Ben Clifton (Forever Lulu /Along for the Ride), Max Lowe (City of Joy) and even Allan Quatermain (King Solomon's Mines). Swayze's character Jack Charles of Father Hood was open, brash, funny and most importantly - hopeful who learned to love his children. Donnie Darko's Jim Cunningham (Swayze) was a snake-oil salesman who under it all was really slime with real no depth of any kind being developed in that character.