This isn't the first time auteur director Bernard Tavernier has waded through the American south... though if you've even heard of (much less seen) his Mississippi Blues, give yourself a gold star.

In the Electric Mist -- my nomination for the worst-titled film since Quantum of Solace -- is likely destined to meet a similar fate. Despite star turns from Tommy Lee Jones, John goodman, Mary Steenburgen, and Peter Sarsgaard, Tavernier's rural Louisianan tale of murder, mobsters, and, er, dead Confederate soldiers, is a rocky affair that makes next to no sense at all.

Jones plays the barely-Louisianan Dave Robicheaux (played previously by Alec Baldwin in Heaven's Prisoners), a struggling-to-be-sober cop who uncovers a mysteriously bound-and-shot black man after Katrina passes through. Next some of the local ladies start getting shot, and all fingers point to local heavy "Baby Feet" Balboni (John Goodman) as the culprit. Or, at least, that's what the ghost of the soldier who fought in the Confederate War tells him. No, really.

There are some side stories here, involving Sarsgaard as Elrod Sykes, a perpetually-drunk movie star, and Robicheaux's family life with wife Bootsie (Steenburgen) -- the character names in the film are nothing if not entertaining -- but most of it is a distraction from Tavernier's fascnation with the deep south and its colorful residents and scenery. Even the main plot itself turns out to be mostly a loss, largely forgotten by the time we wrap things up in the end.

The set reportedly suffered from trouble during the shoot, and it certainly shows on screen in the mishmash of a production that we ended up with. The studio seems to have agreed, dumping the movie on a handful of screens a week before ushering it straight to DVD, where it clearly deserves to be.



The key don't fit.