In The Electric Mist

In the Electric Mist (2009) Trailer
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Now, I know that prejudice is no good, but what can I say, I do feel so when it comes to Tommy Lee Jones. The only time I liked watching him was the movie "The Client". He may be a good actor, I just can't stand his style. However, this time I saw that the director was Bertrand Tavernier and it was to be shown in the Istanbul Film Festival last month, so I decided to give it a shot; let's see how a Hollywood mystery looks like from the point of (an acclaimed) French director. And the result is: What??!!

First of all, I admit that I did not read the book it was adapted from, In the Electric Mist with Confederate Dead by James Lee Burke, well, I did not read any of Burke's books, so I am not familiar with his style at all. And I must also admit that mystery movies do not always tempt me, especially those of Hollywood's. So the whole story would be revealed to me by the movie only (well I read the reviews of how good an adaption it was, from the readers of the book itself).

The movie is about Dave Robicheaux, a detective in a small town in the US, and apparently this is the main character of a series of books by Burke (another one from the series, Heaven's Prisoners, had also been adapted in 1996 so I read, starring Alec Baldwin, thank god I did not see that one, Baldwin is even more annoying). Detective Robicheaux is on an investigation about the brutal murder of a young woman. While the investigation is going on, he meets a young (and famous) actor and his - equally famous - actress girlfriend who are in town to shoot a movie about Civil War. The actor, Elrod Sykes, talks to him about some dreamy visions he had while shooting the movie; while someone else might have thought that he talks nonsense, Robicheaux becomes seriously interested and this leads him to suspect that his investigation is somehow linked to another murder which took place about 40 years ago, of a black man trying to escape prison, which he witnessed as a young boy. And so it follows;

..In the middle of the investigation, another young woman's body is discovered.
..Robicheaux keeps on the investigation of all three murders
..He sees visions of General John Bell Hood of the Confederate soldiers back from the Civil War, and somehow finds peace and wisdom in his friendship.
..After a series of weakly linked events, he finds out who the murderer is.
..The movie ends even more freakish, which would be too much of a spoiler to write here...

Certainly, the concept of mystery involves symbols throughout the story and a little bit of suspense in the end. However the series of events in this movie seems to connect to each other all too abruptly, the characters' developments are weak, and this surely weakens the whole chain. I seriously did not get how Robicheaux and the General have become so strongly connected and I did not see any sincere change in Robicheaux along with this - certainly bizarre and of huge importance - encounter, apart from him only 'talking' about this change. There are sub-plots such as how different a black man's murder by a white man would be perceived, back 40 years ago, or as the drinking problem of the young Elrod Sykes and Robicheaux's concern for his actress girlfriend, the development of a trust bond between Robicheaux and the FBI agent sent to the town (oh yes, there is also FBI involved but I had no idea how to mention that!) etc.. Yet, all of these sub-plots which normally nourishes the big picture somehow occur while we are chained to the insignificant details as if everything was happening in another movie, and what we are left with are only the consequences of these relations.

All in all, I say the first 40-50 minutes are promising, but that is all the movie will give you..