Jessie Stone - No Remorse

Human Remorses

No Remorse
USA 2010 Directed by Robert Harmon 
Sony Pictures TV Blu Ray Zone 1.

Warning: This one has some spoilers.

No Remorse, the sixth of the films presented in the Blu Ray set of Jesse Stone movies, is all set within Jesse Stone’s unpaid suspension from the job of Paradise police chief. It’s set both in Boston and Paradise and, typically for one of these Jesse Stone stories, it has at least two cases going on at the same time.

On the one hand we have Jesse (Tom Selleck) who, angered by his ex-wife’s calls, rips his land line out. He finally buys a cell phone but, it turns out, he can only use it when he’s out of his house in Paradise, because his home is in a no signal zone. Anyway, Boston homicide Captain Healy (Stephen McHattie), who is still recovering from the many gunshots he received at the beginning of the previous movie, Thin Ice (reviewed here), hires Jesse as a consultant on a double homicide with no apparent pattern or connection but, obviously done by the same killer. He says he needs his ‘coply intuition’ but, also, because the suspension is not sitting well with Jesse, who spends a lot of it on the end of a bottle of scotch. 

Meanwhile, Rose (Kathy Baker) and Suitcase (Kohl Sudduth) are trying to solve a case involving convenience stores which are robbed with the sales clerks beaten almost to death (or actually to death in the case of the one they are aware of in Paradise, as the story opens). However, it’s just the two of them on their own because the guy at the town council wants them and Jesse gone from the force... to make a clean sweep after the upcoming hearing for Jesse. So they need to solve the case... which they do with Jesse’s unofficial help, of course. 

So once again Selleck and his co-stars do wonders in this. Hasty Hathaway (Saul Rubinek) is out on parole but the actress playing his now ‘ex’ wife has been changed. She still wants to sleep with Jesse Stone, however. There’s a lot of character development in this one... or character building, if you will. We learn that Jesse loves his dog and is frightened of losing him. We see Rose grow closer to Jesse while she decides to divorce her husband. And we also see Jesse dating a nun... or at least having dinner with her, making good on his offer to take her out to dinner in the previous movie. And we hear the story of Jesse’s psychiatrist Dr. Dix (William Devane)... how and why he quit the police force to change his vocation (another grim tale). 

We also see the death of a regular character in the series... who we always know works for one of the questionable mobsters but who has a much bigger role this time around. Unlike the majority of how these Jesse Stone movies go, he doesn’t die at the hands of Jesse but, instead, kills himself where Jess can see him doing it, crossing the street when the green light shows and walking out into heavy traffic. 

All in all, this one is a good, solid episode and it even reunites Jesse with the young victim of an earlier installment. That being said, the ending of the episode is very much a cliffhanger... with Rose, Suitcase and eventually Jesse (and his dog), gathering for the hearing at the town council, where they all suspect they are going to get fired... roll credits. I guess we’ll find out what happened to them all in the next one.

So, yeah, No Remorse is another entertaining mix of mystery and police procedural, with Selleck once again very subtly playing Stone as an incredibly simple (though far from stupid) man who rolls with the punches as best he can and who follows his own moral code (which quite often has nothing to do with the legal system, it seems to me). And, once again, I’m very much looking forward to taking a peek at the next one as soon as possible. As the credits role, there’s a memorial statement to the writer Robert B. Parker (who wrote the original books and characters these films are inspired by), who died the year of this one’s release.