Mystère au Grand Nord

After I read the book Northern Lights, it ended up being one of the best books I had ever read, so naturally I had to see the movie. Now I knew going in, there was no way for the movie to be as good as the book. There was way too much detail in 600 plus pages to fit into an hour and a half. Leanne Rhimes isn't even close to looking like how i had Megan pictured, but she does the role well. All the other characters were cast very well in my opinion. I've seen a lot worse book adaptations before. They followed the story very well and as I said before, there was just a lot of detail that had to be watered down. Worth watching,just as it usually always is. The book was better.

I have been a LeAnn Rimes fan since she was a young girl singing country songs with her big voice. So I watched this movie because she has a starring role. The other main actor is Eddie Cibrian. As the movie moved along I began to remember the controversy that played out in the tabloids back in 2010 or so. The two actors met making this movie, each was married to someone else. They had an affair, they each divorced their spouses in 2010 and then married each other in 2011. I suppose it is good that they have so far stayed married.

LeAnn is Meg Galligan, one of two bush pilots in this small community. Her dad disappeared 15 years earlier, assumed to have just run away, but the discovery of his body in a cave on the side of a mountain led to the realization he had been murdered back then and the cold preserved his body.

Eddie is Nate Burns who fled his community 3000 miles away back East to take the job as Sheriff. Naturally Meg and Nate hit it off but he gets involved in the bigger task of trying to solve a 15-yr-old murder.

The overall story is not that bad but the script is sorely lacking, most of the characters say and do things that often just don't ring true. Still LeAnn is good, my wife and I enjoyed it as light entertainment. On DVD from our public library.

(There are Spoilers) Not much ever happened in the town of Lunacy Alaska until its new head of the police, which consists of only one man deputy Otto Gruber, ex-Baltimore cop Nate Burns arrived.

Handsome and sure of himself Nate had no trouble at all scoring with the towns two hottest gals mother and daughter Charlene & Meg Galloway. In fact it was the hot and sexy, as well as twenty years younger, Meg who got to Nate heart first before her mom-Charlene-even started warming up in the bullpen. All this fooling around turned sour later in the movie when Meg and Charlene's estranged father and common law husband Pat Galloway was found, in a search for two missing local teenagers, frozen stiff with an ax stuck in his chest in a cave on the snow covered Mount No Name.

As it soon turned out Pat who was thought to have left Lunecy, as well as Charlene & Meg, some fifteen years ago in 1994 was in fact murdered by someone in town who, from all the evidence available, had in in for him. Nate soon starts to realize that the murdered Pat Galloway had been involved with the towns newspaper-The Lunatic-editor Max Hansbacker who he gave,just before he was murdered in November 1994, $3,000.00 to start up the paper.

Max who was anything but cooperative with Nate in finding out who murdered Pat is later found dead in his office with a bullet in his head and a suicide note admitting him being the person who murdered Pat. What we, in the audience, knew is that Max was totally innocent of Pat's murder because we saw, in shadow, Pat's actual killer blow Max's brains out!

Nate in trying to find out who murdered both Pat & Max ends up being resented by the townspeople, from lunacy's woman mayor A. Hopp on down, for him an outsider giving the locals a hard time in trying to do his job. The killer himself tries to get Nate killed by laying moose meat outside Meg's house, where Nate was having an affair with her,and enticing a giant brown bare to attack and kill him. In the end Nate who by then was fired from his job did solve Pat Galloway's murder and bring his killer to justice. That all took place after a wild shootout during a parade down Maine Street celebrating the 209th-back in 1805-anniversary of the towns founding.

Lukewarm, in the frozen north country, murder mystery that was about as stiff and the stiff, Pat Galloway, the movie was centered on. As for Nate's deep emotional problems, stemming from him being a cop in Baltimore, they didn't seem to effect his work at all until, bad news travels fast, they finally caught up with him. As it turned out all Nate had to do was pick up the phone and call home, back in Baltimore, and all would be forgiven.

The surprising thing about this movie is the quality of the cast and the acting within. I was mostly surprised by Leann Rimes who can hold her own in the female lead here and fits in well. I've heard her superb vocal ability and never knew she has thespian talents also, based on this film I would quite happily watch anything else she's done.

The only cringeworthy scene was when Meg Galligan (Leeann Rimes) tells her mother Charlene (Rosanna Arquette) that her father, Charlene's true love, is dead. Arquette goes way over the top at this news and totally wrecks the scene; though to be fair, Mike Robe who directed should've stepped in to give her some better direction and tone down the theatrics a little - sometimes less can be better.

That said, the rest of the film is very well acted by all, though I have to say Jayne Eastwood who portrays Mayor Hopp is on top form. I first saw her in Haven as the no-nonsense coroner, and she has the same kind of believable tenacity in this role also, a joy to watch as she brought a smile to my face.

Robe does a decent job of keeping the mystery and suspense rolling as the story of the new Chief Of Police Nate Burns (Eddie Cibrian) in Lunacy, Alaska finds he has a fifteen-year-old murder case to solve; worse yet, the murder victim is his love interests, father; worst still, it seems that most of Lunacy could be the potential killer. You're never too sure as the viewer as not many clues are given, in fact, you have to be pretty observant and quick-sighted to spot and remember a certain scene to work out the killer's identity before the Chief of Police. The resolve of the story is quick, it may have been better to slow this section down and create a little more tension.

Not having read the Nora Roberts novel I cannot say how well it's been adapted, though in its own right Janet Brownell the Teleplay writer does give the audience one hell of a story filled with believable and interesting characters.

If you like murder mysteries then you should like this one, it is definitely a curl-up with your loved one on a Sunday afternoon movie, while the world passes by outside. Worth at least one viewing.

That's a quote from after Nate was watching a movie, but it pretty much applies to this film.

The story is passable for a mystery and romance.

The acting, however is bad. It is stiff and lacks feeling. There is no real chemistry between Nate and Meg. LeAnn Rimes just never seems sincere in any of her lines. There was very little humor, although I did like the scene with Nate talking to the dog and him talking back. I think the directing had a lot to do with all of that and the climatic scene was very badly staged.

If you can stand lifeless acting, the story might be enough to make this movie worth watching.