Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

A film with more than the usual spoiler issues. Talking about it in any detail feels akin to handing you a gift-wrapped present and saying, "I hope you like it -- It's a thriller about a diabolical secret experiment."

While it is a pity that the story wasn't told with more visual finesse, this is trivial compared to our real-world problems. It takes a good movie to put that into perspective.

**SPOILERS** Very unremarkable mystery thriller from Nora Roberts involving a mad arsonists who's got something against the Hale Family particularly young Reena Hale, Alcia Witt, who's a top arson investigator for the Baltimore Police Department. It's when Reena was 11 and saw her family's Italian restaurant-Sirico's-burned down in an arson fire that she soon became obsessed with fires because of it. Now grown up Reena seems to have fires follow her around in her both professional as well as personal life!It seems that someone want's to screw up Reena's love life by having two of her future husbands Josh & Hugh, John Reardon & Ben Ayres, get killed in very obvious arson fires, in the case of Hugh a fire bombing, just when she was about to marry them! What's even more shocking the person who was convicted in torching her family's Italian restaurant some 15 years ago Joe Pastorelli, David Brown, was not only released from prison just before these latest series of arson fires happened but was also spotted hanging around the neighborhood, or the Hale family Sirico's restaurant, for the the last few weeks!If things weren't weird enough for Reena this off the wall guy named Bo Goodnight, Matthew Settle, ironically just moved in next door to her. What's so strange, besides his last name, about Mr. Goodnight is that he's had, no pun intended, the hots for Reena since he first met her, from afar, at a party some six years ago the very evening that her fiancée Josh was killed in a raging fire while he was in bed fast asleep!***SPOILER*** As you would have expected all this fire & brimstone started back when Sirico's was burned to the ground. The big surprise is who's, besides Big Joe Pastorelli, behind all these mysterious fires now! As it turned out it was someone that a smart fire investigator like Reena should have known right from the start! It seemed that Reena's memory of her family's restaurant fire was a wee bit faulty in her forgetting the person whom she saw, with a crazed look in his eyes, at the scene of the Sirico's restaurant fire! The very person who had just the day before tired to unsuccessfully rape her!

The somewhat unconventionally beautiful Alicia Witt gives a good performance as an arson investigator who, with the help of her older partner (Scott Bakula), tries to track down a mysterious arsonist who seems to target any person she loves for extinction. I'm not familiar with Nora Roberts' books; Witt is the main reason I decided to check this film out, and she does seem to have put a lot of effort into her part. The film is professionally made and acted all around, with realistic depictions of fire (though there is one computerized explosion that looks very fake). The problem is that the story does not contain any major twists, and there are a couple of points where it cheats the viewer (without going into heavy spoilers, I'm referring particularly to the circumstances of Josh's death). It's an OK way to spend 90 minutes, but don't expect much more than that. (**)

I like Nora Roberts' books, but this movie was terrible. The main character is so very unrealistic, but since I didn't read the book, I don't know if this is just an awful book made into a movie or it's just the movie.The story is very predictable. The main character is so cheesy, so depressed and brooding, suspicious of everything and then suddenly happy-go-lucky, not a care in the world. She refers to herself as a cop, but then plays the part of an arson investigator with the fire department.In my opinion, this movie would be great for someone who loves to watch made-for-TV movies, or the typical Lifetime original movie. Otherwise, don't waste your time.

The first two adaptations (Angels Fall and Montana Sky) were disappointing for someone who read the books. I was actually pleased by Blue Smoke.They did a good job of adapting a complex book down to a short movie. The flashbacks were a great way of letting us understand Reena's history and her current emotional state. Of course, they changed some of the details, but those changes didn't bother me, and worked well for the movie. And I think they did a good job of casting for this one - Alicia Witt and Scott Bakula were very good.The only complaint I have is that due to the short time constraint, they were not able to really focus as much on the relationship with Bo, so the chemistry wasn't as strong as it could have been. Matthew Settle is very cute, but we didn't really get to know his character.That said, I enjoyed it.