Movie review: 'The Words'

“The Words” opens with best-selling author Clay Hammond (Dennis Quaid) reading from his new novel, “The Words.” As he starts to read, the scene dissolves into the story he tells.

Rory (Bradley Cooper) and Dora (Zoe Saldana) get into a limo on a rainy night. Rory is nervous. He's accepting a major literary award for his gripping book, “The Window Tear.” Dora is doing her best to soothe his nerves.

The young author is the embodiment of overnight success after years of work. He has studied writing and thought he had ideas to share, but his first book got a stack of rejection letters. He had worked at a menial job in a publishing house, hoping to make contacts that would help later.

He recalls moving to New York with Dora, marrying her and honeymooning in Paris. There, Dora bought him a battered leather briefcase, perfect for holding the works of a young writer.

As Rory fills the satchel with his own work, he stumbles on a timeworn folder full of typewritten pages. The story there is electric and he reads it through and is caught by the prose of the writer he will never be.

The love story haunts him — he can't sleep for thinking of it. What to do? He knows it is an original because there is an inky smudged fingerprint on one page.

Thrown into an ethical quandary, he does something both predictable and despicable. He copies it onto his computer to see how it feels to write that poignantly.

Quite by chance, his wife finds the story on his computer and realizes her husband has written something so different, so beautiful that he has to have editors and agents take a look at it.

Should he tell her the origin of the story and risk changing the adoring expression on her face?

That book is his ticket to the world of recognition, awards and having his other work published. He takes the chance no one will discover his lie.

He doesn't know he has been followed since the night in the limo ride in the rain.

It's a sunny day and Rory is sitting on a park bench by a pond when an old man (Jeremy Irons) stops, sits, and tells Rory what an amazing book he had written.

Used to adulation by now, Rory is nice, thanking the old man and talking to him. He autographs the old man's copy of his book and tries to brush him off, only to be stopped as the old man says the thing he thought could not happen.