Love Wins - DVD

Film: Conor (Kellan Lutz) may be one of the best lacrosse players on his new high school's team. But he keeps getting in his own way with his hotheaded ways and constantly clashes with teammates and his coach (William Mapother). Too bad he's also the father of pretty Brooklyn (Ashley Greene), who Conor has his eye on. But these problems take a back seat when Conor's father is killed in action in Iraq. The loss of his one true caregiver throws the boy completely off track. His mother (Gabrielle Anwar) has to fear that after her husband she will soon lose her son as well, since Conor withdraws more and more from her and seems to magnetically attract trouble. As a last resort, she signs her son up for a training camp with one of her husband's former comrades (Adam Beach). In the middle of the wilderness, Conor is supposed to find himself and learn how to deal with loss and take responsibility. A task Conor doesn't seem to be up to...

Love Wins is a very simply constructed teen drama, in places strongly reminiscent of series like One Tree Hill, while not exactly subtly delivering its pathos-infused message to its target audience. The dramaturgy is kept rather simple and repeatedly makes use of badly worn clichés. Conor, the rebellious young man who learns to control his aggression through sports in the great outdoors and thus finds himself, is drawn just as template-like as the pretty teacher's daughter Brooklyn, who, unlike her father, immediately sees the good in problem teen Conor.

This film by documentary filmmaker Michael F. Sears is extremely low on surprises, not particularly stirringly directed and only conditionally convincingly acted. And yet there are a few reasons that Love Wins is worth watching, especially for girls between 13 and 16. Because not only that both main actors belong to the ensemble of the popular Twilight series. Conor's antagonist Dupree is also portrayed by a girl crush, Chord Overstreet from the series Glee. The rivalry between Conor and Dupree and the light romance between the rebel and the school belle might be enough to satisfy the target audience.

One problem, however, is likely to be that both the romantic aspect of the story and the sports part fall a little short, and the film spends a lot of time on Conor's self-discovery after the death of his father. But since this is not done in a very emotionally mature way and is just as clichéd as the rest of the movie, you won't be particularly moved or carried away here, but rather bored. Still, the arguments that Love Wins has on its credit side for its target audience are enough to make this teen drama worth watching, at least for very loyal Twilight fans, or rather fans of Emmett and Alice Cullen.

Image + Sound: The film has a somewhat soft-edged TV movie look to it. Even though the detail presentation suffers a bit here and there as a result, the clean image overall is able to impress with the vibrant colors and decent overall sharpness, especially in the brighter outdoor scenes. The audio has quite powerfully mixed dialogue to offer, which sounds much more directional in the German language version than it does in the original English version. The music, some ambient noise and minor sound effects only provide a little movement in the surrounds every now and then.

Extras: Apart from a couple of trailers, the DVD unfortunately has no extras to offer.

Conclusion: Love Wins is a rather unsurprising teen drama that isn't exactly subtle in getting its message across. However, for the target audience there is at least a little romance and with two Twilight actors and a Glee star also appealing main actors. Therefore: for fans of the actors, who like romantic dramas of the simply knit kind or series like One Tree Hill, this DVD is quite recommendable

An article by Frankfurt-Tipp