A Beautiful Place to Die: A Martha's Vineyard Mystery

Obvious , it is not an impressive crime film. But, no doubts, it is nice. The temptation, for me and, maybe, for others, was Jesse Mrtcalfe, giving a decent job in this case. The second - Eric Keenleyside and Christine Willis. The paternity problem and dark side of a rich man life works just not so bad. The result - nice and pure Hallmark-esque.

This first part of a new Hallmark series is basically a police procedural. A big-city cop returns to the tranquility of Martha's Vineyard only to become involved in a murder case.

Jesse Metcalfe plays the reluctant detective, Jeff Jackson, who may suffer from PTSD and wants to avoid police work or unnecessary stress. But his natural tendency to be observant leads him to a corpse in the water just off the pier. When he gets pulled into the case, he works with Zee Madeiras (Sarah Lind), the acting ME with whom he has a personal history.

There is not much romance in this first installment, which is fine. The story revolves around uncovering real suspects among a confusing group of possibles, and reconstructing the events of the night when the murder occurred.

The movie seemed to get off to a decent start as far as procedures, which can be distracting when they are sloppy in these movies. The chief was calling for warrants and it looked like the writers would be on the ball. Turns out that the trend flopped soon after that. Jeff handles all kinds of evidence with no gloves. And other things. So OK, this series won't be great on procedures either.

Another minor hole is that Jeff is supposed to have a bullet near his spine and "his doctor" orders him to go easy, yet he spends the rest of the movie running, jumping and fighting.

The mystery is pretty good albeit a bit heavy handed. There are plenty of suspects and some of them are pretty mean looking or acting suspiciously. We get a few red herrings. I didn't figure out whodunit.

The acting is OK. Sarah Lind wasn't sparkling, but as another reviewer said, she didn't have a lot of opportunity to shine. I also agree with that review that the chemistry between her and Metcaff wasn't great, but it was starting to brew. Like all these Hallmark M&M's the leads develop some romance over several movies and I expect the same here. Sometimes there is virtually none in the first installment.

One of my complaints with these series is how unprofessional it is for "amateurs" to have so much involvement and especially to take so many risks. At least in this series, both of the leads have some justification in their involvement and Jeff is trained as a cop so when he takes a risk it is probably calculated.

I look forward to more Martha's Vineyard Mysteries, but I feel bad for this smaller community if murders start piling up.

7/10 - such a refreshingly different Hallmark movie and a genuinely intriguing mystery

Apart from the obvious fact that most of the females within the tale do seem to be a bit "plastic" the locations are pretty decent-an area which doesnt know how to deal with murder when it shows up. In this movie it does. The murderer isnt obvious and clues here and there keep coming up. On the entertaining side if you dont want anything too deep. I wasnt aware of any member of the cast but the offering is watchable although modern police techniques will hopefully arrive in Marthas Vineyard at some point soon!