Prime Suspect: The Final Act (2006)
Helen Mirren returns for the final time as Jane Tennison in the long-awaited Prime Suspect 7. Retirement looms for Detective Superintendent Tennison, but as her career draws to a close, the body of a missing schoolgirl is found, and the hunt for her killer begins. However, as Jane and her colleagues work to identify their prime suspect, the emotional fallout from the murder begins to take its toll on the battle-scarred detective. As the investigation gets underway, Jane is not only dealing with the imminent death of her father, but also an addiction to alcohol which she is desperately trying to keep hidden. There are plenty of twists and turns as Jane confronts her toughest challenge yet: herself, as the popular award-winning series reaches its devastating finale.
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Overrated and overhyped
It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.
The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.
An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.
It was a decent conclusion to years of great TV drama...But I expected better based on what I saw in the last episode....It did stay the course in that it was hard hitting, tough, real, the hallmarks of the series...Tom Bell as Bill Otley was the connection from Episode 1 to the present....He was simply brilliant....The script, although very good, introduced elements which were new to Jane's story....That really through me off....The sister and niece....They never were significant characters in any of the other episodes, unlike Bill Otley and Jane's father....So be it....All in all, I hate to see this series end....I'll probably start watching them again next year, beginning with the first episode....One a year...It will be like revisiting a dear, dear old friend.....well, friend, I don't know about calling Jane a friend......a dear, favorite book....that's more like it....In my dreams, she retires to the isle of Majorca (not Florida, please), and relaxes, unwinds, is friendly, until she sets up a small private eye agency....Don't I wish......
Well it was to be expected that over the fours hours less adverts she would not go out in a blaze of glory and rather more time was spent on Jane Tennyson herself than the investigation. Not on a par with earlier in the series Helen Mirren was nevertheless superb and a new star in the making is Laura Greenwood. The storyline is only adequate and her squad was the smallest yet. Excellent performance also from Mr Tompkinson who continues to impress. But for me there was too much shouting and focus on the parents anguish. Yes it should be portrayed but I thought it excessive. So much so that towards the end the scenes seemed rushed. So I expected and hoped for more but it was good to watch all the same.
The original 'Prime Suspect', an unusually tough police procedural thriller, was a landmark in early 1990s television, immediately making other hits series like 'Inspector Morse' appear tired and out-of-date. Since then, the series has retained some quality through its relatively infrequent outings, but still, the writing has not always been as good as in the first episode and in some cases has lapsed into the melodramatic cliché of the standard crime show. Gradually, I lost interest (I think about the fifth time that the whole direction of central character Jayne Tennyson's life was on the line if she didn't solve some murder in the face of the scepticism of her colleagues). But the series has always featured great acting from the incomparable Helen Mirren in that role, and in this final part she has arguably never been finer, there is some longer-term narrative development from the earlier episodes and Mirren exploits the character's growing history as the basis for a harrowing, wholly three-dimensional performance that almost seems out of place in a crime drama. Behind her performance, there's a nicely executed but less extraordinary tale of murder that could have come from any other cop show.What's amazing about Mirren is how she truly inhabits the parts she plays: having recently seen her in Channel Four's 'Elizabeth', one can say the two series constitute a masterclass of televisual acting, ancient and modern. The series may be done; but the prime of Helen Mirren is far from over.
Absolutely brilliant, not just the acting and the plot - but the beautiful camera work. This really did engage me emotionally.The acting of the girl Penny was very believable not something that is always the case with British child actors.Mirren, as per usual, showed incredible talent to plumb the emotional depths of D.I. Tennison. Such a complex character , with so many faults, it is a character made for good TV drama.My only comment of criticism would be that I find it hard to believe that the headmaster (Tompkinson) confesses to having sex with one of his fourteen year old pupils and is then allowed to walk free?A great shame that this is the end of the era. I will really miss it.