Considering the ratings track record of CBS' previous Jesse Stone movies and the age — 65 — of No Remorse's still remarkably handsome star, Tom Selleck, that audience is likely to be older than the teens and twentysomethings advertisers so adore. So what? Rather than mock CBS for drawing a more mature crowd, give the network credit for tossing those viewers an increasingly rare TV bone. Not to mention handing the network some props for doing any sort of TV movie, seeing as the genre has pretty much disappeared from the face of the broadcast earth.
None of that would matter were the movie not worth watching, but happily, it is. The plot in this sixth installment in the series is not as solid as the earlier films, perhaps because, unlike the first four, it's not directly based on one of Robert B. Parker's books. But odds are fans of the films are now returning simply to spend two hours with Selleck's damaged, out-of-sync-with-the-times hero. That's good, because the more willing they are to accept No Remorse as a character study rather than as a mystery, the more pleased they're likely to be.
Co-written by Selleck and Michael Brandman, who also serve as executive producers, No Remorse picks up where the last film, Thin Ice, left off. Jesse, suspended from his job as police chief of Paradise, is a drunken recluse, much to the disgust of his oddly unaffectionate dog.
In Selleck's hands, Jesse is not so much an angry drunk as a world-weary one, a man disengaged from society in general, but not from individual people. You can see the conflict play out in his use and abuse of a cellphone. He wants to be in touch, but not with everyone, and not through this piece of portable technology.
With Jesse off the local beat, it's up to former assistants Rose (Kathy Baker) and "Suitcase" (Kohl Sudduth) to stop a string of convenience-store robberies. Surreptitiously they seek Jesse's help, for their good and his.
But Jesse is busy. His friend Commander Healy (Stephen McHattie) has hired him and his "cop-ly intuition" to help catch a Boston serial killer. The trail leads to yet another old acquaintance: Gino Fish, the mobster with a secret life so entertainingly played by William Sadler.
Two hours should be more than enough time to solve two mysteries, but the film spends so much time on Jesse's existential angst, the Boston case gets short shrift. The solution — borrowed rather too directly from Agatha Christie— isn't a bad one, but it's completely unearned, the result of the kind of clue-free intuitive leap Jesse usually rails against.
Yet while the mystery is not the strongest, there's much in No Remorse to please anyone who enjoys watching good work from good actors, most of them Jesse regulars. Baker, McHattie and Sadler are welcome TV presences, as are William Devane (Jesse's psychiatrist) and Saul Rubinek (newly un-imprisoned Hasty Hathaway). To have them all in one place is an abundance of mature riches. Throw in Selleck, and "no remorse" is the least of it.
We're talking cause for celebration.
Jesse Stone: No Remorse
* * * out of four
CBS, Sunday, 9 ET/PT
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