Stephen Abell 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.

headhunter46 Having never read Nora Roberts version, I came to this movie with an open mind. A few other reviewers have found numerous faults with this movie but to be fair to it, this movie dealt with so many issues that honestly do affect people in real life. Guilt. Blame. Feeling of being deserted by parents. Uncommitted love. Greed.My spoilers are very mild and should not ruin the surprises in the movie. They do not reveal the ending or the killer.There are no exploding gas stations or cars flying through the air, so if you need that sort of thing to be entertained this movie is not for you.There were enough clues to throw my suspicion in several directions, so you really won't be sure "who done it" until the very end of the movie. I had a couple red flags pop up then down and it turns out one of them was correct. If it had been a game of Clue, it would have been one of my guesses.Now let's address the scenery. Filmed in Alberta Canada we are treated to some incredibly gorgeous mountain scenes and an Oh so wonderful log home by a running stream. My Oh my, I would love to have a cabin like that. Maybe one day. But now back to the movie.According to the story line, the hero is in Alaska at the invitation of the town mayor. It seems someone wanted an "outsider" to be impartial as police chief in this humble little town. The new chief is running away from some very unpleasant dealings in the town of Baltimore, MD. He is an experienced cop which will prove to be a necessary skill before the movie ends. The mayor is a delightful older lady and crusty enough for us to believe she has lived in the far north all her life.Two climbers find a body by accident. Someone had committed a murder fifteen years earlier and it has been frozen in time.There are the usual grumpy suspects to give us a wide assortment to chose from. There are some plot twists and turns, and a bit of humor you might catch unless you are a big city person who has never lived in a small town and known people like these.I loved the scenery and the log buildings. I hadn't seen Rosanna Arquette for awhile and I thought she was quite attractive as well as LeAnn. There are some fellows I assume the ladies would find to be eye candy as well.The baiting of the bear at the cabin might actually have worked as planned to eliminate the new police chief. Knowing how bears are the city cop might have tried to take the bear with his little nine mm pistola and lost his life to one very angry bear. I do feel the "friendship" between our hero and LeAnn was a bit too rushed, but in cold climates relationships might heat up a bit faster than normal? There were some clichés near the end. The interfering state cop gets wounded when he absolutely had the drop on the bad guy, The girlfriend injects herself into the shootout scene and gets wounded.I think the actors did a reasonably good job with their roles. I never got the feeling they were "acting" as I have seen in some other movies. I now have the desire to read the novel to learn why others believe the book is better.It at least has a happy ending, which I like, and I would hope you will too. I actually watched it a second time to determine how many clues I missed as to who the murderer was. I had the bad guy pegged at one time but then let another clue pull me off track.Watch it just to see how well you do catching the killer. When it is over will you feel like a Columbo or just a dumbo?

vranger *** Spoiler Alert *** My wife is a devoted Nora Roberts fan, and so I have done my duty as a faithful and loving husband to DVR and watch all of these movies with her.From the husband's perspective, they're not terrible, but I certainly hope that the plotting in the books themselves hold up better than some of the plotting in the movie adaptations.In this one, early on we get two boys out hiking and finding a body. Do they take note of the spot and hike home to notify someone? No, one stays with the body while the other hangs around a clearing on a mountainside to flag down the search plane.Seriously folks ... not going to happen that way.The acting and parts of the mystery were OK for a good while, and then we get to: Attempted murder by HANGING MOOSE MEAT (read with loud ponderous voice).That got my eyes rolling to the point where the rest of the movie was hard to pay attention to.Shooting it out with the bad guy during the middle of a parade, as this ending had it, was a bit hard to take too. This is not a town that was easy to get out of. The guy didn't know yet that he'd been nailed as "the guy". So of course officers would have simply waited until after the parade, keeping him in sight, and quietly arrested him later in his office.I think the sheer volume of movies of this type (and/or novels of this type) mean that writers have to try to push a bit to get something different into their story. That is a fine sentiment, but not when 'what is different' defies any logic whatsoever.This is not a knock on Nora. As I said, my wife devours everything she writes, and my wife is an educated, professional, and intelligent woman ... so the books can't be doing too much of this. The movie sure did, however.

sol (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.