SEA CHANGE

I caught up with last May’s JESSE STONE: SEA CHANGE, the Tom Selleck TV movie that was loosely based on Robert B. Parker’s novel. It was definitely the weakest of the four Stone movies…then again, it was also one of the weakest of the Stone novels. The plot of the movie was actually better than the plot of the book, but that’s not saying much. The mystery was no mystery and Stone was largely ineffectual and passive throughout. But I enjoyed the movie nonetheless, largely because of Selleck’s performance and the general mood of the piece, which is greatly helped by Robert Harmon’s directing and Jeff Beal’s score. Selleck is perfect in the role and I hope he decides to keep doing the movies long after he runs out of books to base them on, especially since the last Stone novel, HIGH PROFILE, was lousy (there is still one good Stone novel, TROUBLE IN PARADISE, that hasn’t been filmed). I wonder why CBS and Selleck haven’t turned JESSE STONE into a weekly series…though now that he’s busy on NBC’s LAS VEGAS, I suppose it’s a moot point for the time being.