Vintage

Tommy Lee Jones introduces his character, Dave Robicheaux, in a bar by saying something to the effect that he is an alcoholic and is often tempted to have a drink, but never does.   Well, speak for yourself—Dave Robicheaux.  Cheers.

And so we get Tommy Lee Jones ready to kick ass.  I think.  However, he is awfully introspective from the get go, which means I am thinking we are getting the Tommy Lee Jones of No Men For Old Country.  However, I didn't get a feeling this movie will be anywhere near as good as No Country. Why?  Hard to say. It seems to have all the elements of a good film. 

Sometimes the elements don’t jive the way we want.  Maybe it is the style points the Cohen Brothers bring to a film, which is not easily attained.  Not that French director Bertrain Tavernier did anything but a decent job on this film.

Quickly into the flick, Dave Robicheaux is driving along waxing nostalgic about how old mystics in New Orleans put stones on freshly buried graves so the souls wouldn’t wander.  Before we know it, a red Lamborghini, or something like it, careens around the corner of  a street.   Dave Robicheaux pulls over a drunk movie actor with a hot girlfriend.   He is about to take the young bon vivant to jail but the guy knows where a dead body is located in  some New Orleans swamp.

Robicheaux is dead set on dispensing justice, but he seems awfully late in having done it in his career.  In this film, at least, he does not seem to have the resume of the proper ass kicking arm of the law we tend to imbue Tommy Lee Jones with.  But, hey, I am not complaining, because Tommy Lee Jones in anything is interesting.  And I think that could be a chief weakness of this film.  If you replaced Tommy Lee Jones with some ho-hum actor, this film gets real ho-hum real quick.  Or, does it?  Some elements of this film are good, if not really good.  

I have to say as the film continues, I was not fully sure what exactly the hell was going on.  There was the death of a black man and there is this racial element to the film.  John Goodman portrays a sleazebag with money who invests in local Hollywood film productions.  He is a pimp who traffics in girls.  But, someone is killing local girls fresh out of the bus station?  Who is doing it? How is it connected to the death of the black man decades ago, which Robicheaux witnessed as a child.

About Robicheaux being a recovering alcoholic.  That seems a bit clichéd.  Is the recovering drunk the metaphor for a man that is in control.  I am more interested in a strong-willed hero with a weakness for drink.  It is more interesting if you ask me, when a hero wrestles with a flaw.  But, I will say this: this recovering alcoholic theme does tie in with the young Hollywood actor nicely. 

Ned Beatty turns up this is craw fish flick (I just invented that term for any sort of movie that exploits the New Orleans milieu post or pre-Katrina).

There is a running subplot with General Hood, well, an old Civil War Confederate Ghost, that shows up and helps Dave Robicheaux by dispensing advice. 

At first, I didn’t like this but after the General appeared in a scene or two, I bought into this quasi-supernatural element.  I use the term "quasi" because the first time General Hood appears it is chalked up as the result of an LSD-spiked Doctor Pepper.

There are more than a few scenes that strike a lasting impression.  One involves Dave Robicheaux at the local bus station.  He corners some low life who is feeding girls to the mystery pimp that likes to hurt them.  He tells him something to the effect he better find a an honest living or he will kill him.  This is quintessential Tommy Lee Jones if not for a minute.  

Later in the film, the girlfriend of the drunk Hollywood dude, who established a relationship based more on pity with Robicheaux what with being a drunk as well.  But, anyway, his girlfriend gets blown away on a Bayou boat, because she wears a raincoat that Dave Robicheaux had just given her as a temporary respite from the Louisiana rain.  Clearly, the shooter was after Robicheaux but waxed the girl in his raincoat instead.  This would be another tough one to take and would be the sort of event that would drive a man to drink.  Instead, the cavalry rides in.

General Hood shows up to dispense some more advice to see him through this tough time.  He appears at church pew as Robicheaux is seeking for answers.  General Hood gets him going again but things are not about to get any easier for Robicheaux. Next, his fat drunk partner gets waxed.  This was a man that had helped Robicheaux through his recovery when it had been the toughest.

I won’t spoil the ending but let us say that it has the solid stone on top of it, much like the graves of the New Orleans dead Robicheaux mentions in the beginning of the film. This is polite way to say it doesn’t wander too far off the beaten path.   

In The Electric Mist it is not a bad film at all, though I must have missed what the title to this film actually referenced.  It is a more than serviceable and has some really good star power for a straight-to-DVD flick.   The very ending has a nice surprise not totally necessary but fun.  If you happen across this film somewhere, it surely won’t be the greatest film you see, but is hardly a misspent evening of cinema. 

In the Electric Mist, for the most part, includes a handful of actors who all  have made their names in films no doubt much more celebrated than this one.  However, it is testament to Tommy Less Jones, John Goodman, Ned Beatty, Peter Sarsgaard and Mary Steenburgen that this okay movie was never simply a paycheck to them.  You can see them plying their craft as if this fairly safe police mystery on the Bayou would aspire to be something more than a straight-to-DVD accomplishment.  For those reasons, I toast Dave Robicheaux and the ghost of General Hood with a Doctor Pepper.