Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		0.5
Overall		4.0

In the Electric Mist Blu-ray Movie Review

A Cop Story You Haven't Seen Before

Reviewed by Michael Reuben October 29, 2011

Television has so thoroughly assimilated the traditional police procedural that I'm surprised when one makes it to a contemporary American movie screen. Faced with a self-replenishing menu of such fare as 24-hour loops of Law and Order reruns, CSI spin-offs, Bones, Body of Proof, Castle and the current Prime Suspect remake, what distributor would want to chance the considerable sums necessary to lure viewers to the theater for a film about a cop investigating murders? Unless you've got a famous brand with serious buzz (like the upcoming remake of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo), it's not a good business risk.

That's the only reason I can imagine why acclaimed French director Bertrand Tavernier's film of In the Electric Mist went straight to DVD domestically, because it's a crackling good entertainment, with greater depth, texture and frankness than network TV would ever permit. Based on one of the Dave Robicheaux novels by Pulitzer Prize-winning author James Lee Burke, the film draws the viewer into a dank, unsettling mystery set in post-Katrina Louisiana, where the past is never fully past and the ghosts of old Civil War soldiers pass hard-earned wisdom down to the living, if they'll listen. Even in the shorter version that the film's producers prepared over Tavernier's objections (his preferred cut was released in Europe), the film easily bests much of what passes for drama at the box office today. And the Blu-ray is a beauty.

But I was about to learn that the dead can hover on the edge of our vision with the density and luminosity of mist, and their claim on the earth can be as legitimate and tenacious as our own. - Dave Robicheaux

Though Lt. Dave Robicheaux (Tommy Lee Jones) is a police detective in Iberia Parish, Louisiana, the first thing he tells you in voiceover is that he's an alcoholic who is sometimes tempted to take a drink. "But I never do", he affirms, and one is quickly convinced that his wife, Bootsie (Mary Steenburgen), and his daughter, Alafair (Alana Locke), are big reasons why Dave remains sober. He also has a good friend and sponsor in fellow cop and alchoholic, Lou Girard (Pruitt Taylor Vince).

Certainly Robicheaux's work would drive any normal person to drink. The latest case involves murders of prostitutes and runaways, all of them found in grisly condition. And Robicheaux has spent the last 44 years carrying the memory of a horror he witnessed as a teenager, when he saw two white men gun down an unarmed black man as he tried to flee them through the swamp. The local sheriff refused to investigate on the word of a teenager, and no body was ever found.

Until now. One day Robicheaux pulls over a wildly careening sports car driven by Elrod Sykes (Peter Sarsgaard), a movie star filming a Civil War film nearby, where tax incentives and local investors have lured a Hollywood production company and director Michael Goldman (played, in a wicked parody of directorial ego, by director John Sayles). Sykes is accompanied by his girlfriend, actress Kelly Drummond (Kelly Macdonald, reuniting with Jones after No Country for Old Men), but Robicheaux isn't star-struck. He's in the process of taking Sykes to jail for DUI, when Sykes tells him about finding a body during shooting on a remote sandbar. The description jolts Robicheaux upright, because details are an exact match for the man he saw gunned down when he was a teenager. He offers Sykes a pass on the drunk driving charge, if he'll take Robicheaux to the body. At long last, the case of "Dewitt Prejean" ends up on the books of St. Clare Parish (a fictional place), whose current sheriff is none too pleased.

Now Robicheaux is investigating two difficult cases. When he picks up a tail, and first his credibility, and then his life, are attacked, he can't be sure which case is the reason. He's pretty sure, though, that Julie "Baby Feet" Balboni (John Goodman, having a fine time) is somehow involved. Robicheaux and Julie were friends in high school, but their lives went in opposite directions. "How many guys would burn down their own father's nightclub with their own father still in it?" Robicheaux asks Julie. "You gotta forgive me if I get a little upset by these kinds of attitudes", replies Julie, but never bothers to deny what Robicheaux said. These two know each other too well.

Currently, Julie is pretending to be a Hollywood player by bankrolling the Michael Goldman film in which Sykes is starring ("I talk on the phone everyday to people in California you read about in Entertainment Weekly"). Not much else is happening in Southern Louisiana since Katrina. Driving out to the set, Robicheaux finds that even one of his old police colleagues, Murphy Doucet (Bernard Hocke), has joined the movie business, providing security for the production. Doucet's partner in the security firm is none other than one of the area's leading citizens, Twinky LeMoyne (Ned Beatty), who owns the family sugar factory.

Robicheaux follows his leads, interviews his suspects and witnesses (not always by the book) and ultimately puts the pieces together. But what distinguishes Electric Mist from the usual police story is its rich sense of the place Robicheaux calls home, both past and present -- a sense that goes well beyond the superficial references to local places and personalities that a show like Law and Order tosses in for "authenticity". Much of it comes through the spacious widescreen photography and the care with which Tavernier positions his characters within a distinctive landscape that looks like a separate world unto itself. The script also gives us an outsider perspective in the person of Rosie Gomez (Six Feet Under's Justina Machado), an FBI agent who's been sent to work on the serial murder case, because the Bureau clearly doesn't think local authorities are up to the challenge. Agt. Gomez sticks out like a sore thumb in Iberia Parish, but her very presence is a constant reminder that the world of 2008 has changed from that of Robicheaux's youth. Not completely, though. Local black residents are reticent about talking to Robicheaux, even though they know him to be trustworthy and fair, because the murders he's investigating were committed by whites -- well-connected whites, as it turns out, the kind you didn't cross then and don't cross now.

The weight of the past shines out from Robicheaux's face, and Tommy Lee Jones, who is in almost every scene, uses the cragginess his rugged looks have accumulated to show both the burden and the responsibility that memory has become to Robicheaux. Jones is a skillfully minimalist actor, who never does more than he needs to, even in scenes requiring physical action. In film, less is almost always more.

Where Electric Mist truly launches into poetry are the scenes where Robicheaux encounters the ghost of Gen. John Bell Hood (Levon Helm), a Confederate commander in the Civil War. It's Elrod Sykes who first tells him of seeing ghosts in the swamp, but Robicheaux dismisses the story as a drunken hallucination. Then someone spikes Robicheaux's soft drink in one of several attempts to discredit his investigation, and the detective drives off the road. In his sleep -- or perhaps not -- Robicheaux finds Gen. Hood at a Confederate encampment, where they begin a conversation that resumes periodically through the rest of the film. It's a serious conversation about doing right, learning from mistakes and remaining focused on what's important.

Whether the General is a genuine ghost or part of Robicheaux himself (the film's final shot is a headscratcher), the point is the same. Especially in a part of the world where so much of what happens today is a product of actions and events dating back to the founding of the Republic (and earlier), it's foolish not to acknowledge that we live and act within a small zone surrounded by a "mist" like that of which Robicheaux spoke in the quotation at the beginning of this discussion. Those who came before us are still there, and they will have their say. A man whose job it is to speak for the dead better listen.

In the Electric Mist Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

In the Electric Mist was shot by director Tavernier's frequent collaborator, Bruno de Keyzer, with anamorphic widescreen lenses and finished on a digital intermediate. Since it was never released to theaters here, I have no theatrical showing against which to compare the Blu-ray, but Image's 1080p, AVC-encoded presentation, taken on its own terms, is stunning. De Keyzer is as effective at rendering the elegiac bayou swamps as he is at capturing the still-devastated areas of New Orleans, where Robicheaux's investigation eventually takes him. The image is beautifully detailed with superb black levels, so that even in dark night scenes with a steady downpour, essential visual information is conveyed with clarity. Film grain has been naturally reproduced but is never obtrusive; thankfully, de Keyser and Tavernier belong to an older school of filmmaking that doesn't believe in eliminating every trace of grain at the DI stage.

Not surprisingly, given the locale, earth tones predominate, with many different shadings of brown and frequently lush greens. Probably the single biggest departure from this palette is at Julie Balboni's home, where Balboni appears to have tried to replicate a California look and failed miserably. I saw no signs of high-frequency filtering, transfer-induced ringing or other inappropriate digital tampering, nor did I spot any compression artifacts.

In the Electric Mist Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Swamps and wetlands provide interesting opportunities for subtle surround effects, and the DTS-HD MA 5.1 track of In the Electric Mist places a variety of rustling, dripping, insect, bird and other sounds of nature in the surrounds whenever appropriate. Storms and downpours move out into the listening environment, and the occasional thunderclap rolls through the room. Still, the best feature of the Electric Mist soundtrack is the music by blues guitarist Buddy Guy (who appears in a small but pivotal role as one of the locals who provides Robicheaux with local gossip). Guy's bluesy tunes, as well as those by local Cajun musicians, lend authenticity to the underscore by Marco Beltrami and add immeasurably to the film's atmosphere. The dialogue remains clear, even when the accents get a bit broad.

In the Electric Mist Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Theatrical Trailer (SD; 2.35:1, enhanced; 1:45).

In the Electric Mist Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

In the Electric Mist is the kind of film that could equally have come out of the old studio system or the free-wheeling days of the 1970s. It's the current studios that have so narrowed the criteria for movies that there's not much room for anything other than fantasy films, formula comedies and star vehicles (but only for young stars). The film offers intriguing characters, an involving story and provocative themes and is well worth your time, either on a rental or the next time the disc price drops (as Image titles frequently do). The disc may lack extras, but it's technically proficient and is highly recommended for its presentation of the film.