Apparently I didn't watch the same movie as the other reviewers on here. I never heard of Jesse Stone before. Didn't know it was a character with several movies. This was the first one I saw and I can already tell you for sure that it was also the last one. I also didn't know it was going to be a television movie. Nothing wrong with that if it's a good one. But the problem is that it's just not a good one. Jesse Stone played by Tom Selleck is an annoying slow character, not pleasant to watch. The story is also very boring. They sometimes make references to stories from other movies in that series so if you didn't watch any other ones than it's even more boring. The glory days from Tom Selleck in Magnum are clearly over. Lousy television movies like this one are just right for him. But not for me to watch.

If you like police dramas you should like this one. Jesse Stone has been forced to retire early because the town council didn't like his policies concerning enforcement. In this film Jesse is out to find why a young friend of his (a girl named Cindy) has been found dead about a mile from his place. Supposedly she died from a drug over dose. His investigation leads him to several interesting finds. Turns out the rehab place she went to was just a semi sham. They let their patients go with drug prescriptions to replace (?) the addictions. One of the ex aides at the place used it to recruit drug addled girls as hookers. Cindy was one of them. Stone gets the scum bag in a hotel room stripped to his boxers. He is told to quit or die. Stone kills him when he breaks into Jesse's house armed to the teeth, I guess for revenge. This movie is also where Jesse's police chief replacement shows up. He is a real political tool, hired because of his relationship as the son in law of the head council member. Stone is again hired by the state to look into a murder case. Jesse investigates and finds out the guy is innocent of the murder charge but is guilty of a rape just a few minutes before the robbery/murder.

I've read the books by Robert Parker and Paradise is filled with creepy, gloomy characters, so all the movies are certainly spot on. I can get past the cryptic and stilted dialog in the books because I'm curious to see how the plot plays out but for some reason, the dour characters become tedious when you have to actually watch them glumly interact with each other. It's also highly annoying to listen to the cast beat to death the 'it's a small town' gag from beginning to end. I was amazed to see that even the dog looked like a miserable wretch. Tortured characters are always a great hook in both books and movies but there is such a thing as beating a premise to death and Mister Parker is no slouch in this department. The writers, directors and producers of the series of movies would have been prudent to dial back most of the author's character idiosyncrasies because they're more irritating than compelling.

While this is a welcomed continuation of a good (excellent) Tom Selleck series (I don't care for "Blue Bloods"), I was a bit disappointed in "Innocents Lost." For one, it clearly,clearly plays to Selleck's vanity as he lays (not so cleverly) the decided foundation for the next episode. While that is good, this one was too incomplete for my liking. Second, the pacing of "Innocents Lost" seemed to be out in the netherworld--slow at times, possibly to make sure that the full two hours time slot was completed yet not forgetting to set the stage for the next episode, when? In six months' time? A year? New viewers could easily have been baffled by the "inside" story, events and characters based upon previous episodes (which really isn't fair to new viewers, that is, if new viewers were wanted). Character development lagged (we've a new police chief and we know we don't like him and we know that he's bound to be "gone" in another episode, but, please, don't tease us to the extent that it did. And, Jesse, forget about your ex-wife. Pul-eeze. Enough whining. Move on. Please.All this said, though, I didn't regret watching "Innocents Lost"--but was quite let down by its "incompleteness."