Death In Paradise

Paradise Lost

Death In Paradise
USA 2006 Directed by Robert Harmon 
Sony Pictures TV Blu Ray Zone 1

Warning: Some big spoilerage.

The third of the Jesse Stone TV movies, based on Robert B. Parker’s crime novels, is Death In Paradise. Once again we join the chief of police in Paradise, Massachusets as played, very thoughtfully and introvertedly, by Tom Selleck (an actor I’ve always liked but barely seen because he doesn’t usually star in the films I would want to see... it’s only because my dad loves these Jesse Stone films that I’m discovering them now*). 

This one seems to have a lot going on in it and starts off with the discovery of a corpse in water... which has only been there about three weeks but, that’s enough to make identification hard (it almost looks like a mummy). It turns out it’s the body of a thirteen year old girl and Jesse and his department have to find out who murdered her... although it takes a while to identify just who she is, at first. 

Meanwhile, there’s another sub plot involving a woman who is regularly abused by her husband whenever he drinks, in a domestic violence case. This one actually did not end up where I thought it would but, yeah, there are consequences to the team of regulars in the pursuit of this one. 

And talking about sub plots... two more things Jesse has to deal with is a) dating a local doctor from a college and b) trying to give up drinking by seeing a psychiatrist. I’m guessing the drinking stuff will take a few movies to sort out (and then I’m guessing a backslide for Jesse too) and, I don’t know if the woman he’s dating hangs over into anymore of the movies either... time will tell I guess. 

Here’s a thing though... of the two main cases which Jesse is dealing with in this story, the murder and the domestic violence... both trails end in death. In fact, Jesse either kills or gives rise to a kill in self defence, three people when all is said and done. So, yeah, although I enjoy Selleck playing the monosyllabic, often silent type of person, he does have his moments where he becomes a man of action, so to speak. I’m not sure that’s a good spin for the character and I’ll have to keep an eye on his body count in future, I think. 

Two more quick things. 

In a couple of flashback sequences, as Stone is trying to figure out how the girl got to be at the bottom of a lake, weighted down, we see some shots of her under water a little like the lady in the water in the second of Frank Sinatra’s Tony Rome films, Lady In Cement (without the nudity). And then, later in the episode, a ghostly vision of her appears to Jesse in his office, saying what Molly will say when she enters a few seconds later, to highlight to Stone that it’s an important clue and that he should follow it up. So this is interesting stuff here and I’m wondering if he’ll have any other ghostly visions as the film series continues. 

Once again, Selleck is surrounded by good actors including regulars (so far) Viola Davis as Molly Crane and Kohl Sudduth as Suitcase... both who work under him. Here’s another thing though... and this is the big spoiler here folks... I said one of the things Stone is working on has consequences later down the line. When the wife beater fires a shot off in the local supermarket, Stone is forced to shoot him dead (he fires twice in the end because the first shot doesn’t incapacitate the perpetrator) but shortly afterwards he discovers that the shot that went wild from the guy has hit Suit in the head. So for the rest of the episode, Suit is in a coma in a hospital bed and Jesse and Molly take turns to read to him, to try and spark some kind of response. And, as the story concludes, Jesse is still reading to the unconscious Suit before the credits roll. So I’m kind of on tenterhooks now to see if the character survives to come back for the next film in the series or not. I’m kind of hoping he will but, obviously, with him in a coma, they could string this one out for quite some time. 

I guess I’ll know soon enough because, that’s me done on the third of the Jesse Stone movies, Death In Paradise. I’m liking these a lot more than I thought I would and am looking forward to watching the next one soon. 

* I wrote this review about a year before he recently passed away.