Northern Lights

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.

That's a quote from after Nate was watching a movie, but it pretty much applies to this film.

The story is passable for a mystery and romance.

The acting, however is bad. It is stiff and lacks feeling. There is no real chemistry between Nate and Meg. LeAnn Rimes just never seems sincere in any of her lines. There was very little humor, although I did like the scene with Nate talking to the dog and him talking back. I think the directing had a lot to do with all of that and the climatic scene was very badly staged.

If you can stand lifeless acting, the story might be enough to make this movie worth watching.

Someone should tell LeAnn Rimes that simply reading the lines with a bitchy attitude doesn't make you an actress. I was never a huge fan of Meg in the novel, but Rimes managed to suck what I did like right from the character.

I understand that an adaptation has to change things in the screen version, but is it necessary to strip all the good stuff? I made it through the first half hour of this mess and I had to turn it off. A complete disappointment with none of the atmosphere that sucked me in while reading the book. Eddie Cibrian was fine as Nate, but I missed the setup to the story that had been done in the novel -- with Nate settling in as sheriff that really made the book for me. It was a murder mystery sure, but there were more to it in the book and I missed that in this adaptation.

This is just like the 2007 collection that aired -- I could only get myself through one of out of the four movies more than once. They keep taking Nora Roberts and pairing her wonderful novels to barely anything at all. Why does a mediocre guy like Nicholas Sparks get all of his novels on the big screen and Nora gets no special treatment beyond stunt casting?

I have been a LeAnn Rimes fan since she was a young girl singing country songs with her big voice. So I watched this movie because she has a starring role. The other main actor is Eddie Cibrian. As the movie moved along I began to remember the controversy that played out in the tabloids back in 2010 or so. The two actors met making this movie, each was married to someone else. They had an affair, they each divorced their spouses in 2010 and then married each other in 2011. I suppose it is good that they have so far stayed married.

LeAnn is Meg Galligan, one of two bush pilots in this small community. Her dad disappeared 15 years earlier, assumed to have just run away, but the discovery of his body in a cave on the side of a mountain led to the realization he had been murdered back then and the cold preserved his body.

Eddie is Nate Burns who fled his community 3000 miles away back East to take the job as Sheriff. Naturally Meg and Nate hit it off but he gets involved in the bigger task of trying to solve a 15-yr-old murder.

The overall story is not that bad but the script is sorely lacking, most of the characters say and do things that often just don't ring true. Still LeAnn is good, my wife and I enjoyed it as light entertainment. On DVD from our public library.

After I read the book Northern Lights, it ended up being one of the best books I had ever read, so naturally I had to see the movie. Now I knew going in, there was no way for the movie to be as good as the book. There was way too much detail in 600 plus pages to fit into an hour and a half. Leanne Rhimes isn't even close to looking like how i had Megan pictured, but she does the role well. All the other characters were cast very well in my opinion. I've seen a lot worse book adaptations before. They followed the story very well and as I said before, there was just a lot of detail that had to be watered down. Worth watching,just as it usually always is. The book was better.