Great photography, Selleck rocks, but terrible awful clichés and predictable plot
Jesse Stone: No Remorse (2010)If it weren't for Tom Selleck I'd never have made it twenty minutes through this cliché laden over-sized made for TV movie. It feels like any routine t.v. episode cop and detective movie stretched into two hours, and yet it's missing even the cool twists that the best t.v. shows use to keep each week interesting.
Except for the really superb (I mean superb) photography, this is dull, bad stuff. I watched it all because of two things. One, I wanted to see who did the crimes and why. Two, I thought with each passing scene it couldn't continue as badly as it started.
Okay, three actually, Selleck himself is fun to watch in his grumpy, steady, intuitive way. And filmed well throughout.
If you have seen other Jesse Stone movies you might have other reasons to put up with some of the additions here because they might have given more backstory. I haven't and so (for example) the scene toward the beginning where the hotty woman tells Selleck she just wants uncomplicated sex with him and she's wearing no underwear, and where he says no thanks and grumpy as ever leaves and walks home, is totally stupid. Or male fantasy. (Or female fantasy if you like an aging Selleck very very much?) And it has zero bearing on the movie. She never appears again. It was just for the little thrill.
Some would call it character development. But it's just thin and obvious. It's like giving cardboard depth. Call it foam core. If by good fortune you don't actually see all these various character traits as clichés you won't be as annoyed or bored as I was. That comes from what movies (and t.v. shows) you've seen before. Selleck plays a characteristic older cop on the skids. He drinks, he's been kicked off the police force, he befriends a sweet ordinary young girl like a daughter, he figures out the crime by just being experienced and intuitive, he is single and lonely, he's obsessed, and so on and so on. If it wasn't for Selleck having screen presence it wouldn't hold an ounce of water.
The supporting cast is reasonable, if again filling predictable niches in this kind of movie. I like cop and detective movies. I was open to liking this a lot. I'm even a Detroit guy (like Selleck) and was predisposed favorably. But be prepared. Enjoy the camera-work throughout because that's the main attraction, and it's not enough.
score 3/10
secondtake 7 January 2013
Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw2732769/35849
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