Jesse Stone: Thin Ice

source: Robert B. Parker's Jesse Stone: Thin Ice

I understood this movie much more when I learned that this was the first episode in the series that was not based on a book. It seems the writers were not allowed to create new scenes or dialog and were forced to cut and paste from the previous movies. how many cop/donut jokes can be straight armed out the screen before an intelligent audience starts to feel abused? How many "pals that have sex" can one over the hill emotionally detached has-been hook up with? And how many people over the age of 6 use the word "pal?" And really, has anyone looked up the definition of alcoholic? Two drinks per night for a 200lb adult male is not alcoholism, it's good for your heart. I doubt he could even get a buzz off that. Others have reviewed this series saying it is sparse and hard hitting. I more or less agree in respect to the first several installments, but not this one. It was boring, predictable, repetitive and lacking in drive. I don't blame the actors. It seems they did their best with a cut and paste script. The only reasons I can think that this movie would be worth watching is if you were wholeheartedly committed to the series, rented it for free from the library, or you were uncontrollably hot for Sir Tom.

To a series which for a "cop series" is decidedly different in many ways. Just watched this one for the 2nd time. For me, I would not want to work for employers that Jesse Stone has to work for and in a town that turns its back on corruption but dishonestly obtains money thru its radar (blocked by a tree-so you cant see the speeding sign!). Some lovely scenery in most of the others in the series, in this one you see very little. That said, every member of the cast contributes to this one when the team deal unofficially with a missing child and a shot police chief that no one seems to care about. Watch this one: how the writers pull the two story lines together is rather good, as is the ending. This makes for a really good story worthy of watching

BEWARE - SPOILER: The only way I can explain why the secondary mystery is ludicrous is to give it all away. A woman's baby is kidnapped from the hospital shortly after birth. A baby's decomposed body is found months later in a river with the wrist band of the kidnapped baby. The authorities declare it to be the woman's baby but she will not believe it. Jump ahead to "today", 7 years later. The woman finds a letter that was mailed from Paradise so she shows up in Stone's office and asks for help. Rose insists on investigating. Jump ahead to end of story. Rose finds a woman living in Paradise who gave birth in the same hospital but her baby had lived less than a day. This is all legally documented information. So, this mother # 2 presumably put the wrist band of the mother # 1's baby onto her own DEAD baby's body and left the hospital with mother # 1's baby and went home to Paradise. Anyone see ALL the problems???? DEAD baby, known to be the child of mother #2 has clearly been dealt with legally with all documentation in place. Yet the hospital allowed mother #2 to walk out of the hospital with a LIVE baby. That's not at all likely. Remember, Rose was able to get the documentation (death certificate, maybe autopsy report, etc.) that mother # 2's baby had died. Not just any baby, mother # 2's baby! Let's go one step further. If the hospital had allowed mother # 2 to walk out with a LIVE baby and had a DEAD baby on its hands somewhere, like down in the morgue, on which was the wrist band of mother # 1's baby, HOW in heaven's name did everyone think that ANY baby had been kidnapped? And how in the world would mother # 2's DEAD baby have gotten from the morgue to a river many miles away. Believe it or not, I have watched all the Jess Stone movies many, many times over the last year because they have helped me get through the death of my husband. Every time I have watched Thin Ice I have been irritated and not understood why. The other night it hit me. It's not that I don't particularly like the actress who plays the grieving mother who comes to town. It's that the whole mystery and its "solution" makes NO SENSE.

The opening scenes to Thin Ice (2009) are intense and exciting! The movie wastes no time and dives straight into the action. Whilst juggling the usual demons and baggage, the troubled chief that "mostly gives out parking tickets" needs to find out who shot his friend. The town council have it in for Jesse and to make matters worse he refuses to hire a relative of theirs. Starts off gripping but later the pace slows to a crawl. Still entertaining and easy to watch. 👍 Suitcase's continued confusion and slip-ups since his coma are still entertaining. 👍 An appearance and decent performance from Jessica Hecht. 👎 Found it to be slower paced than usual. 👎 More shots of Reggie looking disappointed at Jesse drinking needed! 👎 No Viola 👎 No DeAngelo

This latest Jesse Stone feature is the first one of the series which is not based on a Robert B Parker novel. Even so, it rings true to the series and is, in my opinion, one of the best written in the series. While the interaction between Rose (Kathy Baker) and Jesse (Tom Selleck) is not as warm and caring as the relation between Jesse and Molly Crane (played by Viola Davis in previous episodes), the dialogue is crisp and taut with meaning. It is good to see Kathy Baker given some major time in one of these episodes. The same thing holds with Jesse's dealings with Suitcase. The dialogue is crisp and razor sharp with all the wit and irony that I expect from Robert Parker characters. A previous reviewer talked about this episode being character driven. I think that is true of all of them, but definitely more so than usual in this episode. The dialogue in this one helps define and shape the characters as never before. I thought it sparkled. The back and forth between Jesse and the woman who is investigating him, Sidney Greenstreet - who saw that one coming? - is ironic, witty, urbane, and has just the right feel to it. The same is true for some of the scenes with Kathy Baker. There is a lot of irony and an attempt on Jesse's part to seem more hard-nosed than he actually is. Some may think that the plot lines were rather weak, but they were really not as important to character development as the dialogue which builds up the growing relationships between Jesse and Rose, Jesse and Suitcase, and Jesse's new female interest, Sidney. ******** WARNING! Here may be spoilers! Read at your own risk! ******* There must be some unstated rule that Jesse will always be in conflict with the town council. While it demonstrates Jesse's desire to do the right thing, no matter what the cost, the conflict in this episode seems a bit contrived, but we do get to see Jesse push back, and it does tend to set up the forthcoming episode - where we hope, Jesse will prevail, once again. Obviously, there are lots of loose ends to tie up with Captain Healy and the motive for the non-stakeout stakeout that opened the show. While we know who shot Healy and that Jesse got him, we still do not know what the motivation was. Hopefully that will be cleared up in the next episode. I confess that the plot involving the kidnapped child was a bit weak, but Camryn Manheim gave the mother's character more depth and poignancy than might be expected. Her performance also gives substance to the conflict between Rose - who wants to open up the investigation - and Jesse - who is against it. Yet we see that Jesse's heart is in the right place as he allows Rose to investigate on her own time and even helps her. While the relationship between Rose and Jesse is not the same as that between Jesse and Molly, I think we can look forward to some deepening between the two in the next episodes - assuming Kathy Baker is willing to reprise her role. I hope she does. This plot line gave us a glimpse of both Jesse's and Rose's inner workings. I really appreciated the fleshing out of Jesse's relationship with Suitcase. Again the back and forth banter between the two signal a growing intimacy which was lacking in previous episodes. I look forward to how this relationship will develop. All in all, this was a satisfying new episode in this series. It bodes well of things to come!

Watching this latest Jesse Stone film Thin Ice put me in mind of Murder She Wrote and Jessica Fletcher's little hamlet by the sea Cabot Cove. The similarities between Cabot Cove and Paradise are striking, but the attitudes are certainly different among the residents. As usual there are two cases for the small town police force to solve in this film. It opens with Tom Selleck and his friend Stephen McHattie from the State Police on a most unofficial stakeout when both are shot. Selleck manages to get off some shots and may have wounded one of the two shooters. The second is Camryn Manheim who came in from New Mexico. Her day old infant was snatched from the hospital several years ago. Mother's intuition and a strange letter tell her that her kid is in Paradise. On that very thin evidence and on her women's intuition Kathy Baker investigates with silent approval from Selleck. By the way Manheim's one scene with Selleck and Baker is unbelievably moving. But it was the side issue that grabbed me. The town council is having a hissy fit over Selleck doing a little moonlighting with McHattie. His chief critic on the council Jeremy Akerman who after unsuccessfully trying to get Selleck to hire his nephew makes it clear that his chief function as police is to nail those speeders at the local trap and generate some revenue. Selleck who worked homicide in the LAPD really thinks it beneath him. Not to mention that those murders from previous Jesse Stone stories are giving Paradise a bad name which could affect the tourist trade. Contrast that with Cabot Cove and how they treat Jessica Fletcher and think of all the murders she solved in Murder She Wrote's long run. The residents there certainly never thought of firing Tom Bosley or Ron Masak and certainly weren't about to tar and feather their most famous resident. Cabot Cove in fact had to be the murder capital of the United States. Paradise has a long way to go. I think it's the provincial attitudes of some of the people you will take away when you watch Thin Ice.

All the Jesse Stone movies are very well written and acted. Only one inconsistency I found in the screen play for this one. When Rose Gamon (Kathy Baker) visits and questions the neighbor of the suspected child kidnapper, they talk in detail about the suspected woman. While the long-time neighbor seems to know all about the woman and the so-called birth of her child, she fails to mention that the child was killed in an unfortunate, accident. When Jesse and Rose finally confront the kidnapper, she shows them a newspaper article she has kept about the accident and the child's death. Obviously, this would have known to the neighbor, but she never mentions it to Rose. Am I wrong? Did I miss something? Only flaw in an otherwise excellent movie with a steller cast.

I love the feel of these (made for TV) movies. And as another person commented, I also like the music and how it adds to the atmosphere. This one had good attention to detail, I thought. At least, based on a couple of things I noticed. At the firing range Suitcase had a Bic four color pen in his breast pocket; when he was taking notes on his observation of the bad guy outside the bar, he used the same (sort of?) pen to write them. There were a few other little details like that - clearly, the people who put this together took good care with the film. And I continue to be impressed with how Tom Selleck portrays Jesse Stone. Tom might be older than Jesse, but he does a fantastic job. I'm sure that Robert B. Parker would have been happy.