*** 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.
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.