Sony has released Nora Roberts' High Noon, another Lifetime telemovie from 2009 based on the best-selling author's novel. A romancer with action elements (not an everyday occurrence in the TV romance genre), Nora Roberts' High Noon still has some problems making its story about a single mother/hostage negotiator work, with both the professional and personal angles of the script coming up slightly obtuse.

Expert hostage negotiator Lieutenant Phoebe McNamara (Emilie de Ravin) barely has a moment of peace in her life. Juggling the demands of her job (which seemingly come at the most inopportune moments), with the responsibilities of being a single parent to her young daughter, Carly (Savanna Carlson), Phoebe can only really count on her mother, Essie (Cybill Shepherd), for help. But even that situation is fraught with tension; Essie is an agoraphobic, and can't leave their house (a house that needs work for which, apparently, Phoebe can't afford to pay). Phoebe's work is also a source of tension, not only because of the dangerous (both physically and psychologically) nature of her job, but also because she has to fight against the dismissive attitudes of chauvinistic police officers like Arnie Meeks (Patrick Sabongui), who tries to razz Phoebe during her lectures on hostage negotiations. A chance encounter with the boss, Duncan Swift (Ivan Sergei), of a jumper that Phoebe talks down off a ledge, blossoms into romance...despite the fact that Duncan won a 100 million dollars in the lottery. But this chance for a fairy tale ending for Phoebe turns ugly when someone begins to stalk her, eventually leading to an explosive climax for the professionally and personally conflicted Phoebe.

SPOILERS ALERT!

Despite one or two good action scenes and the movie's relatively swift pace, I couldn't take Nora Roberts' High Noon too seriously because too many of its details seemed wonky, while the central love story remained cold and aloof. Realism isn't exactly a requirement of the TV romance genre (and many times, it's a hindrance), but with a film like Nora Roberts' High Noon, where events are presented in a supposedly more gritty fashion, and where people get blown up and shot in the head, it's not unreasonable to ask that all the details (at least the procedural details) remain on the square. Chalk it up to either miscasting or the direction by Peter Markle of lead Emilie de Ravin, but I didn't believe for a moment that she was an experienced hostage negotiator. It's a cliché in movies like Nora Roberts' High Noon that if the lead character is a woman having difficulty doing a "man's job" in a "man's world," and the actress is hot (which they always are in movies like Nora Roberts' High Noon), then the actress usually redoubles her efforts to make her character appear tough and competent and equal to any man she works with in the story. As I wrote, that approach is as old as the hills, but here, it's difficult to determine what de Ravin and Markle were going for with Phoebe. The character comes across neither as tough enough to handle the strain of such a job, nor does she seem excessively weak. She just...is; she's a blank, with her negotiating scenes carrying neither conviction nor much suspense (de Ravin's soft, disconnected delivery doesn't help, either). I also didn't buy the cop world that's drawn here, where junior-grade officers openly mock superiors during the course of their duties (that gets you written up/suspended/fired), or where Phoebe can actually draw her weapon and repeatedly shoot her own car - in public - when it doesn't start (not only would that incident be in all the papers, but she would be immediately suspended and likely terminated). I also didn't believe she couldn't afford a 600 hundred car repair bill (a police lieutenant in a large urban police force, pulling the specialized duty she had, wouldn't be starving). Again, if realism is the aim for this romancer, than we expect the world created here to be believable.

Phoebe's personal life didn't make much sense, either, possibly because significant details and events from it seemed to have been hacked out of the film in the editing. Can someone explain to me the significance of introducing Cybill Shepherd as Phoebe's agoraphobic mother...and then dropping her altogether after about ten minutes of screen time, if that? This isn't the first time I've seen one of these Nora Roberts adaptations that hook a relatively big name like Shepherd, only to shunt them to the side with woefully underdeveloped characters (poor Tippi Hedren didn't even get the equivalent of a showy cameo in Nora Roberts' Tribute). As for the romance here...it's as detached as the rest of the film is, with de Ravin and Ivan Sergei not exactly lighting up the screen with chemistry. Sergei in particular wears an expression of near total boredom in his scenes (probably because he has absolutely nothing to do here), while de Ravin fails to generate any responsive heat with the equally uncommitted Sergei (their love scene on the steep set of stairs doesn't engender erotic, voyeuristic involvement - just concern for their sacroiliacs). Director Markle, who's been all over the map with feature and TV films (he could turn out dogs like Hot Dog: The Movie and Youngblood, or something involving like BAT 21), does know how to structure the action scenes, but since we're not really involved with Phoebe as a character, we don't care how these hostage sequences pan out. Nor for the rest of the film, for that matter.

The DVD:

The Video:
As with all of the four Nora Roberts DVDs released this week, Nora Roberts' High Noon looks quite good in this anamorphically enhanced, 1.78:1 widescreen transfer. Cools are appropriately valued, and the image is sharp. No real compression issues to speak of here.

The Audio:
The Dolby Digital English 5.1 audio track is far more than necessary for this largely dialogue-driven vehicle, but it comes in handy during some of the action scenes. Not much separation, but you won't be straining to hear the super-crisp lines, either. English and French subtitles are included, as well as close-captioning.

The Extras:
There are no extras for Nora Roberts' High Noon.

Final Thoughts:
Potentially interesting story elements are introduced and then dropped in Nora Roberts' High Noon, while largely unrealistic clichés bog down the various subplots. Chemistry is lacking from the detached leads, while the action scenes - well handled - are too few and far between. This might be a rental if you're really into the actors, but otherwise, you can safely skip Nora Roberts' High Noon.