SnoopyStyle
Catarina 'Reena' Hale (Alicia Witt) is working towards being a fire investigator. She's been obsessed with fire ever since her family bar burned up when she was young. John Minger (Scott Bakula) is her mentor since that fateful day. The angry father of the neighborhood bully was arrested. At college, she's taken with boyfriend Josh Bolton but he dies in a fire. Her next boyfriend Hugh is killed in an explosion with a ring in his pocket. She moves into a house next to eager Bo Goodnight who professes his love. She gets a call from her stalker hinting at the previous incidents. She fears the next target will be Bo.It's a slow but functional TV thriller. It needs much better style to intensify the story. Witt is capable but she doesn't get much of a chance. The fire story allows for some explosions but they're not particularly impressive or thrilling. It may be OK for a crime TV drama but it's a bit stretched out.
mollidew
I feel it isn't relevant that this is a made for TV movie. Whether TV or the big screen, movies are an entirely different medium from the novel. In so saying, they cannot be translated exactly into a TV screenplay. One must cut out some details or change them for the time frame given. The opening scenes were very suspenseful, even as some have stated, probably not what actually happens in a real test. It wouldn't have shown the main characters dilemma over fire and set up the storyline without it.Ms Witt is always charming in her roles. I remember her the most when she was much younger in Mr. Holland's Opus. She is wonderful as the main character of this movie and Scott Bakula was his usual entertaining self. It is a sad story but I feel well written for TV. Most movies of this type are fairly predictable which is fine. There are only so many ways to write a story and not make it seem contrived to get some bizarre twist. This one actually has its own twist because one forgets who the arsonist could be unless you are paying very close attention. This is one aspect of the movie that escalates with the writer trying to keep us guessing by not actually showing the face of the person who is committing the crimes. This is not a new idea but it keeps you guessing who the person might be.The additional storyline of the guy who sees a woman across the room and falls in love, looking for her over time seems a little unusual and the only part I had a little trouble with but it was a cute idea. I find the general storyline plausible, even though some details wouldn't happen in real life in my opinion. The movie was very enjoyable. I wouldn't give it a 10 but it rates an 8. If you like romance novels, you should enjoy this movie.
sol
**SPOILERS** Very unremarkable mystery thriller from Nora Roberts involving a mad arsonists who's got something against the Hale Family particularly young Reena Hale, Alcia Witt, who's a top arson investigator for the Baltimore Police Department. It's when Reena was 11 and saw her family's Italian restaurant-Sirico's-burned down in an arson fire that she soon became obsessed with fires because of it. Now grown up Reena seems to have fires follow her around in her both professional as well as personal life!It seems that someone want's to screw up Reena's love life by having two of her future husbands Josh & Hugh, John Reardon & Ben Ayres, get killed in very obvious arson fires, in the case of Hugh a fire bombing, just when she was about to marry them! What's even more shocking the person who was convicted in torching her family's Italian restaurant some 15 years ago Joe Pastorelli, David Brown, was not only released from prison just before these latest series of arson fires happened but was also spotted hanging around the neighborhood, or the Hale family Sirico's restaurant, for the the last few weeks!If things weren't weird enough for Reena this off the wall guy named Bo Goodnight, Matthew Settle, ironically just moved in next door to her. What's so strange, besides his last name, about Mr. Goodnight is that he's had, no pun intended, the hots for Reena since he first met her, from afar, at a party some six years ago the very evening that her fiancée Josh was killed in a raging fire while he was in bed fast asleep!***SPOILER*** As you would have expected all this fire & brimstone started back when Sirico's was burned to the ground. The big surprise is who's, besides Big Joe Pastorelli, behind all these mysterious fires now! As it turned out it was someone that a smart fire investigator like Reena should have known right from the start! It seemed that Reena's memory of her family's restaurant fire was a wee bit faulty in her forgetting the person whom she saw, with a crazed look in his eyes, at the scene of the Sirico's restaurant fire! The very person who had just the day before tired to unsuccessfully rape her!
apetty-4
I guess if you like WE! or Oxygen, you'd probably like Blue Smoke. I am a fire investigator, so my wife thought I would probably like this movie. Appreciate the thought, but....The movie starts with the newbie female arson investigator (a specialized police officer with fire investigation training) getting some fire suppression training by entering a live-fire smokehouse. Alone. In a smokehouse-maze with crazy trap doors, tunnels and ladders over fire pits. I understand movies are for entertainment, but at least a little realism would have been nice. The next 30 minutes is all relationships, flashbacks, idiots sleeping with curtains blowing across lit candles.Couldn't finish it.
AD
