Northern Lights (2009)

This workmanlike adaptation of a Nora Roberts novel doesn't have much to recommend it, unless you're a sucker for cosy mystery yarns. There's the usual amalgamation of tragedy, skeletons in the closet, romance, obsession and a murderer and nothing much new to get excited about. I liked the snowy backdrop to the action but didn't care much for the square-jawed simpleton hero, Eddie Cibrian, and his cold-as-ice love interest Leann Rimes. Ironically, the two actors fell in love while filming, but they have zero chemistry on screen.Rosanna Arquette appears, but is unrecognisable from earlier in her career, having gone under the knife. I'm not a guy who can usually spot the identity of the murderer in these sorts of films, but he was glaringly obvious here, even to me, right from the very beginning, so it was a chore to keep watching.

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?

*** 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.

Janet Brownell adapts Nora Roberts' novel for a Lifetime Network presentation. Nate Burns(Eddie Cibian)accepts a job as chief of police in Lunacy, Alaska hoping to to get away from thoughts of the traumatic death of his partner back in Baltimore. Things are boding well until Nate meets a feisty, independent and easy on the eyes bush pilot Meg Galligan(LeAnn Rimes). She has her own demons to battle; but things look promising when romantic sparks fly when around the town's new lawman. Lunacy is shocked when the body of Meg's father is found in a mountain cave. Everyone in town seems to be one of the dead man's friends, but Burns actually thinks someone in town is a killer. Now he must back up and prove his inclinations. There are some scenes of Rimes half-nude in bed; and that is getting pretty far away from her near squeaky clean reputation.Also in the cast: Rosanna Arquette, Greg Lawson and Stephen Huszar.