Emilie de Ravin starring in "Nora Roberts' High Noon" on Lifetime

[august]

I can't believe I missed this - it premiered back in the spring, on April 4th on Lifetime, and was rerun this past weekend (although i only saw a couple of minutes of it, by accident.) It was based on a Roberts novel (there actually is a connection to the old western movie) and is about a police hostage negotiator being stalked by a killer.

...expert hostage negotiator Lieutenant Phoebe McNamara (Emilie de Ravin) juggles her high-pressure career with the demands of raising her young daughter and contending with her agoraphobic mother, Essie (Cybill Shepherd). When Phoebe meets handsome bar owner Duncan Swift (Ivan Sergei), he can’t resist her take-charge attitude and attempts to earn her affections. Though she tries to resist his charms, Phoebe soon realizes no amount of negotiation will keep Duncan at arm’s length. When Phoebe is assaulted by an unknown assailant in her precinct, she can’t help but be deeply shaken. She later receives a series of mysterious and threatening messages, and soon discovers she is the target of a psychopathic killer out to destroy her personally and professionally.

Details at Lifetime's site, where you can actually watch the movie legally online, and see video stuff with the cast. Emilie is just 27, probably 26 when this was filmed, but is playing grown-up roles at last! There's a brief interview with her about this and other projects here.

I'm sure it will rerun again soon....

[august]

OK, I caught a good bit of this a few days back. It's a typical....ok, not bodice-ripper, but perhaps kevlar-vest-ripper.

Emilie is completely believable as a police lieutenant, who realistically would be at least 10 years older - this is the sort of role that someone like Vicky Pratt or Lost's Elizabeth Mitchell or Michelle Rodriguez would usually play. Since there's not exactly a shortage of hot mid-30's actresses, someone - probably her agent - did a great job at getting her this role.

She has a great Mel Gibsonish moment at the beginning, where there is a jumper on the roof of a building, and he has a gun. She goes up, approaches him, and displays her hands, saying "I brought you some beer." She and he sit down w/ their legs dangling off the roof, drink a beer together, and he asks "Won't you get in trouble for drinking on the job?" "Not if you don't jump," she replies.

Another cute bit is when one of her detectives, who's also her BFF, answers her cell phone right after she's cancelled a lunch date with the hot guy who has been asking her out. Something like "Hi, no this is Phoebe's friend, and she's really sorry she had to cancel on you, but then she realized that she hasn't had sex in a year, so she'll be right over. Bye!" The look on Emilie's face is priceless, very much like the look she gave Rose when Rose told her (at the end of Season 3) that she'd better be "real nice" to Charlie.

The male lead, Ivan Sergei, played Paige's boyfriend/hubby on Charmed BTW. Cybil Shepherd has a bit part as her mom, which works, since they look alike. It's a very traditional, by-the-numbers cop thriller-for-women, nothing different than any episode of Law & Order. Great poster: