"Northern Lights" Review: More Mystery Than Romance

If you’ve never read the book and have only seen the promos, it would be easy to think that “Nora Roberts’ Northern Lights” is a sweeping romance.

But you would be wrong, as “Lights” is actually a murder mystery with a little romance on the side. And thankfully, the mystery is a good one, because the romance doesn’t always make sense…

Eddie Cibrian stars as Nate Burns, the new police chief of Lunacy, Alaska. Nate was a homicide detective in Baltimore, but he’s come to Alaska to run away from something that happened to him in Baltimore.

He ends up running right into the arms of pilot Meg Galligan (LeAnn Rimes), who has a truckload of baggage herself, including a tumultuous relationship with her mother (Rosanna Arquette) stemming from being abandoned by her father.

But when Nate stumbles on to the truth about Meg’s father, things take a dark turn in the normally peaceful town. And Nate realizes that some of the things he tried to escape may have followed him across the country…

Cibrian is solid as always and Rimes is pretty good, but the duo is not given enough to really make the romance work. I understand that condensing a novel into a two-hour movie means taking some liberties with story development, but I think this one goes a little too far. We’re expected to invest in the romance before we even really know who the characters are. And when Meg gives Nate her first ultimatum, it completely falls hollow since we hadn’t seen them together enough for her to earn the right to give him one. Cibrian and Rimes’ strong chemistry almost makes you go for it, but not quite.

Poor Rosanna Arquette is saddled with a character that you’re supposed to feel sorry for, but you can’t quite do it. And her issues with Meg don’t quite make sense since Meg is angry that her mother is a slut, but then asks Nate to sleep with her when she barely knows him…

As I said, it’s the mystery that makes this movie work because it does a great job at casting suspicion at all the wrong people. I was sure who the killer was up until the very last moment when they showed us who it really was. And the victim that kicks the mystery off—which I won’t reveal here—is a great twist that affects all of the characters and shakes up the entire town as they must come to terms with the fact that there is a killer among them.

If you’re looking for a sweeping romance with a couple struggling to get together, you won’t get that here. But if you’re looking for an interesting mystery with an attractive couple thrown in for fun, then you’ll want to give this a look.

“Nora Roberts’ Northern Lights” premieres Saturday, March 21st at 9 p.m. on Lifetime…

Photo Credit: Dan Power/Lifetime