Wicker Park is a 2004 movie directed by Paul McGuigan and starring Josh Hartnett, Rose Byrne, and Matthew Lillard. Wicker Park is one of McGuigan’s first major motion picture releases and is a story written by Gilles Mimouni and Brandon Boyce both of which are making their major motion picture debut as writers. While Wicker Park wound up being a financial disaster it scored well among movie goers that saw it and has started to enjoy a low level of success as a rental. While it did not do very much to advance the career of anyone involved with it, it still does stand as the major motion picture debut of many of those that were involved with the movie at higher levels including the director, the writers, many of the actors, and executive producer Henry Winterstern.

Wicker Park is about Josh Hartnett’s character Matthew who has fallen in love with a girl named Lisa who is a dancer in Chicago. They found each other by chance and fell in love and each day they would get together at Chicago’s Wicker Park to be together and take a break from their busy days to spend some time alone. After a while Matthew was offered a much better job in New York and he asked Lisa to move with him to New York while he advanced his career. As he waited for an answer Matthew began to get impatient and begins to call frantically and soon starts to reach out to her friends. Matthew is completely infatuated with Lisa and he is completely heart broken when he finally realizes that Lisa has disappeared without a trace and he has no way of finding her and that he may never see her again. Matthew is forced to move to New York and move on with his life. Little did he know that soon his life would attempt to come full circle.

Two years later Matthew has returned to Chicago and has put Lisa into his past as he continues to work on his career and his life. By this time Matthew is engaged to his boss’s sister and his life and career are finally starting to work in his favor. As he is working on a large business deal in a Chinese restaurant in Chicago he sees what he believes in his heart and soul to be the Lisa that he was forced to leave behind two years earlier. He attempts to make contact with this girl and soon recruits the help of his friend Luke, played by Lillard, to help him find this girl and get some answers that Matthew feels he desperately needs to help make closure for that part of his life. Soon Matthew is canceling his business trip to China, putting the career he worked so hard on for so long in jeopardy, and risking his future marriage all to find this girl he is convinced is the link to closing a open book from his past. When he finally makes contact with the girl he comes to realize that she is not the Lisa he knew but there is a chance that this Lisa, as her name turns out to be, just may have the answers Matthew needs to truly move on in his life. It is a story about love and romance but more importantly it is a story about how it is almost impossible to go on with your life when your heart has any questions that it needs answered and cannot find the closure it requires to allow you to truly move on and find real happiness in your life.