Love and Honor Annihilates Probability One 60s Cliché at a Time

The CW version of the Vietnam War and the 1969 counterculture, Love and Honor hews to a mushy formula far older than its subject matter. Given a week of R&R, gregarious ladies man Mickey (Liam Hemsworth) accompanies silent, brooding Dalton (Austin Stowell) back to the States so Dalton can propose to his girlfriend Jane (Aimee Teegarden), whom he discovers is now a love child named “Juniper.” Mickey claims that he and Dalton have deserted, a lie that ingratiates him with anti-war hottie Candace (Teresa Palmer) but sets in motion inevitable trouble when the authorities start looking for the duo. Between the cast’s modern hairstyles and attitude, and the paint-by-numbers set design and period costumes—replete with Mickey blending in with his new peace-and-love pals by wearing a Che Guevara T-shirt—the action comes across as a prolonged, dreary game of dress-up. That director Danny Mooney shoots his material like a TV show doesn’t help, nor does a sitcom-like scam to free Mickey from police custody and the stud’s earlier, cheesily chaste moonlit smooching with Candace beside a shimmering lake. By the time everyone self-reflects and comes to understand each other, the film has long since annihilated plausibility via its assault of teenybopper clichés.