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SYNOPSIS:
Get ready for a suspenseful ride with a movie that's all about
passion, family, food and fire! After witnessing an uncontrollable
blaze burn her family's pizzeria to the ground when she was
just 11 years old, it's no wonder that Reena (Alicia Witt)
decides to become an arson investigator. Now, years later,
our all-grown-up heroine decides to visit the old neighborhood,
where she finds true romance with a hunky carpenter named
Bo Goodnight (Matthew Settle). But Reena is swiftly knocked
off cloud nine when she discovers that a psycho connected
to her past has resurfaced to wreak havoc in her life. It
turns out that this villain has an unhealthy obsession with
torching things (or people!) who are near and dear to Reena.
Now she must use her sleuthing skills to snare this pyromaniac
before her life (and love) go up in flames - literally!
MOVIE
REVIEW
I guess
novelist Nora Roberts' books are the rage these days for a
number of them to
be made into movies, although straight to television ones.
Not having read the
books, I'm speculating that they're likely to be relatively
superior to the usual
churn of the romance pulp from say, Mills and Boons, and if
Sidney Sheldon's novels
turned into movies are your cup of tea, then those from Nora
Roberts will likely be
up your alley as well.
Alicia
Witt stars as Reena Hale, who's quite an unconventional protagonist,
besides
being an alpha-female type, she has this extremely weird,
unhealthy fetish for
fires. Not that she's a fire-starter, but her obsession and
fascination stemmed from
having to witness an arson attack on her family's Italian
restaurant business one
lonely night, and being of an impressionable age, she discovers
her calling in life
as an arson investigator, under the tutelage of John Minger,
played by Scott
"Quantum Leap" Bakula.
But while
the beginning showed some nice setup between mentor and student,
the focus
continues along Reena's relatively messed up love life filled
with personal
tragedies, where her lovers turn into victims of the one thing
she has a passion for
in life - fire gone out of control. And you do know just how
much heart she puts
into a relationship when she can just bounce right back after
each loss, and get
herself involved in a flash with yet another admirer, Bo Goodnight
(yup, you got
that right, played by Matthew Settle), who demonstrates some
really freaky stalker
tendencies.
Being
made for television, although the character of Reena and John
may be
comfortable in movies like Backdraft, don't expect too much
of a special effects
extravaganza. In fact, explosions are superimposed amateurishly,
and you're likely
to let out a chuckle or two at it. Then again, for the television
medium, you don't
suppose there's much budget to make something state of the
art, don't you?
It's a
romance movie after all, though each of the relationships
here don't last
more than 20 minutes on screen, and most of which are told
in flashback style. The
investigations into the arson incidents are rudimentary at
best, and you don't have
to be a rocket scientist to decipher the obvious culprit,
which took the characters
here years to crack the case.
Again,
Blue Smoke would serve best as an afternoon matinee show where
you just want to pass time, and having logical pauses in the
movie (designed for television commercials in mind with the
cliffhangers) helps you grab another can of soda and snacks.
I've not read the book, so I am wondering if the novel will
turn out to be of a more superior medium in which the story
could thrive, given the many subplots and in depth family
relationships that it could have provided focus in.
SPECIAL FEATURES :
Only trailers are provided in the
DVD, which are for Saawariya, The Water Horse: Legends of
the Deep, The Jane Austen Book Club, and for those who like
a glimpse of all the Nora Roberts novels turned into movies,
there's a trailer for that too.
AUDIO/VISUAL:
Presented
in 1.71:1 anamorphic widescreen, the visual transfer is decent
for a
television movie, and unfortunately, the extremely brief and
unimpressive fire
sequences never pushed the limits of the 5.1 Dolby Digital
sound.
MOVIE
RATING:
 
DVD
RATING :
Review
by Stefan Shih
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