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A Walk to Remember is a 2002 romance film based on the 1999 romance novel with the same name by Nicholas Sparks. The movie stars pop singer Mandy Moore and Shane West. The movie was directed by Adam Shankman and produced by Denise DiNovi and Hunt Lowry for Warner Bros. The novel, written by Sparks, is set in the 1950s while the film is set in the late 1990s/early 2000s.

When a prank on a fellow high school student goes wrong, popular but rebellious Landon Rollins Carter (Shane West) is threatened with expulsion. His punishment is mandatory participation in various after-school activities, such as tutoring disadvantaged children and performing in the drama club's spring musical. At these functions, he is forced to interact with quiet, bookish Jamie Elizabeth Sullivan (Mandy Moore), the only daughter of their church's pastor, and a girl he has known for many years but to whom he has rarely if ever spoken. Their differing social statures leave them worlds apart, despite their close physical proximity.

Landon has difficulty learning his lines for the spring play, so he asks Jamie to assist him. She decides to help him but under one condition: Landon must promise not to fall in love with her. He chuckles at the strange request and doubts that he could ever fall in love with her. Landon is not attracted to the quiet, conservative, or obedient girls in town. He is drawn to the pretty, popular, and outgoing girls.

Landon and Jamie begin practicing together at her house after school. Landon and Jamie also begin to spend more time together and begin to develop a friendship. Landon discovers that Jamie’s wish list of everything she aspires to accomplish in life includes getting a tattoo, being in two places at once, and being married in the same church as her parents. One day, Jamie approaches Landon at his locker, where he is hanging out with some of his friends. When Jamie asks Landon if they are still on for practice that afternoon he smirks, "In your dreams." His friends laugh and Landon's smirk falters as Jamie's face fills with betrayal and embarrassment. That afternoon, Landon arrives at Jamie's house, hoping that Jamie will still agree to help him. But she refuses to open the door. When she eventually does, she sarcastically remarks that they can be "secret friends." She slams the door in his face when he agrees. Landon eventually learns the script by himself.

During the play, Jamie astounds Landon and the entire audience with her beauty and voice. Landon kisses Jamie at the end of the play, which was not in the script. Landon tries to get close to Jamie, but she repeatedly rejects him. It is only after Landon's friends play a malicious joke by making a picture of Jamie into a pornographic one that Jamie agrees to get to know Landon. After he punches out Dean and shuns Belinda (his friends who played the joke), he takes Jamie home.



The two pursue a relationship. He asks if she will go to dinner with him, but she replies that she is not allowed to date. He wants the date so badly that he goes to her father in the church and asks him if he can take Jamie out to dinner. Her father says no. Landon asks for her father to have faith in him. He eventually says yes. Landon takes her out to dinner and dances with her, something he never did for anyone else. Landon then sets out to help her accomplish a few things on her wish list. One memorable date had Landon taking Jamie to the state line. He excitedly positions her to straddle the line in just the right way, and when Jamie asks him what he's doing he tells her, "You're in two places at one time." Her face lights up with joy, as she realizes that Landon set out to make her impossible dreams come true. One evening, Landon asks her to find a star for him with her telescope. When she asks why he is looking for that particular star, Landon replies: "Because I had it named for you." She embraces him and whispers, "I love you" to him for the first time.

One evening, Jamie finally tells Landon that she has terminal leukemia and has stopped responding to treatments. Landon gets upset at first. Jamie tells him that the reason why she didn't tell him was because she was moving on with her life and using the time she had left. But then Landon happened and she fell in love with him. Jamie starts to break down as she says to Landon, "I do not need a reason to be angry with God," and she flees.

Landon goes to his cardiologist father's house and asks him to help Jamie. His father hesitates a bit, as leukemia is not his specialty, and says that he needs to examine Jamie and know her medical history before he could do anything. Landon responds by leaving in a huff.

Landon and Jamie make up the next day, by hugging and he tells her that he will be there for her always. Soon, word gets out about Jamie's illness. Eric, Landon's best friend who had also participated in the prank on Jamie, comes and tells him how sorry he is and that he didn't understand. Later, Dean and Belinda both come and apologize.

Jamie's cancer gets worse until she collapses in her father's arms. He rushes her to the hospital where he meets Landon. Landon doesn't leave Jamie's side until her father practically has to pry him away. Jamie's father sits and tells her that "If I've kept you too close, it's because I wanted to keep you longer." Jamie tells her father that she loves him so much and he eventually breaks down into tears.

The next day, Landon comes to the hospital and sees Jamie being wheeled out of the ward. He asks Jamie what's going on and she replies by asking him to thank his father for the help. Landon asks Jamie's father what she means. He tells him that Landon's father is going to pay for private homecare for Jamie. Landon is stunned, so later in that night, he knocks on his father's front door. His father answers. Landon whispers "thank you" and his father hugs him. With all the exhaustion and fear billowing over, Landon breaks down in tears in his dad's arms.

Landon continues to fulfill various wishes on Jamie's list, such as building her a telescope so she can see a comet. Her father, who at first didn't approve of him, helps out. After Jamie sees the comet through the telescope, Landon proposes marriage with Jamie accepting. Through this process, Landon and Jamie learn more about the nature of love. The movie ends with Jamie's death, but only after the couple are married in the same chapel as was Jamie's deceased mother, the event that topped Jamie's wish list. Landon himself becomes a better person through Jamie's memory, achieving the goals that he set out to do, like she did.

Four years later, Landon visits Jamie's father. It is obvious that Jamie helped him focus and become a better person. For example, he reveals he has finished college and has been accepted into medical school; prior to meeting her he had no plans for life after high school. He tells Jamie's father that he is sorry he could not grant Jamie's wish to witness "a miracle" before she died. Her father replies by saying, "She did. It was you." In the end, Landon remarks that Jamie saved his life, she taught him everything about life, hope & the long journey ahead, and how he will always miss her yet that their love is like the wind in which he can't see it, but he can feel it.