In the Electric Mist

Tommy Lee Jones is at his excellent, haunted best in a tailor-made role as a Louisiana cop

Tommy Lee Jones is at his excellent, haunted best in a tailor-made role as a Louisiana cop. He discovers a connection between the New Orleans murder of a prostitute and the discovery of a long-dead body of an African-American man in a swamp and, as life gets hard, Jones ends up talking to dead Confederate officers. Esteemed veteran French director Bertrand Tavernier delivers a classy, well-crafted thriller, packed with tension and doomy atmosphere, and you can almost smell the bayou and the stench of the rotting past in this weird, hypnotic tale based on a novel by James Lee Burke. There's a bit of action and violence, but this is more of a crime drama than a thriller: yes, the script's talky, so just go along with Jones as he picks up on the clues. If the mystery in the end isn't that surprising, the film makes the journey to its revelation worthwhile. Of the distinguished cast, Peter Sarsgaard stands out as a hard-boozing movie star.