It is a performances centric movie

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny

**SPOILERS** Having her car break down in the wide open spaces of the state of Wyoming Reese Gilmore, Heather Lockear,is out of money and a place to say until her car in repaired. Stuck in the town of Angles Fall Reese ends up getting a job at Jonnie's place-the Angle Food Diner-run by, you guessed, Jonnie, Linda Darlow.As it tuns out Reese turns the greasy spoon eating establishment into the top gourmet spot in the state having people from as far away as Cheyenne and Jackson Hole travel there to savor the hot and testy dishes that she cooks up. We soon learn that some five years ago Reese was a top chef back in Boston at the top rated Maneo Restaurant. We also sadly learn that Reese was the only survivor of a massacre at the restaurant where 14 of her friends and fellow employees were gunned down by a crazed madman who has never been caught!Trying to put her shattered life back together Reese after months of mental therapy and shock treatment now wants to start a new life at friendly Angles Fall but things don't seem to work out the way she hoped that they would. Hiking in the woods one morning Reese spots, with her binoculars, a couple arguing by the river bank. The argument leads to murder with the man strangling and then bashing the women's head in and then taking off in the woods! After a very traumatized Reese reported the incident to Angles Fall's Sheriff Rick Marsdsen, Gary Hudson, a search was made of the area with nothing, no body no blood no clothing, being found! Wanting to drop the case and get back to the business's at hand, like giving out parking tickets, Sheriff Marsden is bothered by the very insistent Rease in finding the body of the woman that she claimed to have seen murdered and the man who murdered her!As it soon becomes apparent to Sheriff Marsden, and almost everyone else in town, that the trauma Reese has been suffering from, since the Boston restaurant massacre, has effected her mind and caused her to conjure up the incident at the river bank! An incident that nobody but Reese's boyfriend Angels Fall's world famous mystery writer Brody, John Schaech, believes! That's until the murdered woman, through a police composite sketch, was positively identified as being that of Jackson Hole stripper Donna James, Shannon Tuer, who's been missing for over a week!It's then with his victim identified, and the evidence to her murder leading straight to him, that the unknown killer comes out into the open. This in order to shut up Reese by murdering her and making it look like she, being as mentally unstable as she is, killed herself! The only problem the killer has is that Reese's boyfriend Brody who unlike herself is not suffering from severe mental trauma is on to him as well!

What a bunch of incompetent idiots. They hire Locklear, and photograph her so that she ends up looking like Jocelyn Wildenstein. They hire aging uber-hunk Schaech, show him ripping off his shirt in steamy scenes, and then don't show his chest. Who knows, maybe Locklear was having a bad-face day, and Schaech was having a bad-chest day.I felt sorry for the actors having to grind their way through this stuff; I guess its an indication of how difficult it is for them to find decent roles. The story is unusually dumb, and does a disservice to people with serious mental problems who have been helped by some of the procedures depicted.

I have long been a fan of Nora Roberts, but never had the chance to see any of her work retold in a movie. It was definitely worth the wait.I don't think the plot was altered all that much from how the story was originally told, although there were some things added or changed a bit to throw suspicion around.The parts that were cut from the story(understandably) did not detract from the movie version - both were excellent. I could identify with both of the lead actors as playing their characters straight from the book. Johnathon Schaech was especially good as Brody and was well matched with Heather Locklear as Reese. The other characters fit in almost as well, with some minor differences that I had pictured in my mind. But, of course, everyone sees things a bit differently.I hope the next three movies are done as well as this one was.

I'm only giving it as much as 4 stars because they did a good job following Nora's book allowing for the time constraints, but it's a shame that the casting wasn't better. I thought Jonathan Schaech was OK as Brody. Joanie was too nice - nowhere near cranky enough. But surprisingly enough, Heather Locklear was the worst. You'd think as long as she's been around she'd be able to do a much better acting job than that. It's like she didn't care enough to give it her all. It was pathetic, starting with the scene where she hears the car backfire. That wasn't a "hit the deck" kind of reaction, that was more like when the director says "ok, when the car backfires, you go like this." And her fights with Joanie and then Brody were beyond ridiculous. I'm betting she never even read the book. And if she did and still acted like that, then she should really be ashamed of herself.