In the Sloppy Mist

I just watched an extremely LAME-O movie and I would like to perform a public service by dis-recommending it with extreme prejudice. In the Electric Mist is the most boring "thriller" I have ever had the misfortune to watch.

I used to just love Tommy Lee Jones in anything, but I understand now that he can really only play one role, which leads me to believe that he's not so much acting as playing himself. He's absolutely spot-on for The Fugitive and U.S. Marshalls. And Men In Black, I guess, although I just think that's such a weird movie that it doesn't matter how he acts.

First of all, he can't do a cajun accent to save his career, and he sounds even more mumbly than usual trying. Really, he sounds bored. Which bores me. As opposed to thrilling me, which I would expect a "thriller" to do.

This movie goes too far trying to get southern Louisiana's slower-pace-of-life-then-them-Northern-colder-states atmosphere, to the point of making everyone lethargic and drunk all the time. "Dave," a most unlikely name for Tommy Lee, is an alcoholic, and so is everyone else around him, whether they go to AA meetings like Dave or just sit at the creekside fishing with a broken twig in one hand and a can o' Bud in the other.

Speaking of atmosphere, Dave creates some by being the overseeing narrator. A Southern police leiutenant in his fifties (I'm being generous here) poetically contemplating the larger meaning of it all. Yeah. Right. It could happen. And don't throw Faulkner at me. He wasn't a cop, he was a weird artist.

Oh, I should note, it's only the men who are alcoholics, not the women and children. The womenandchildren are one glob (save for the FBI agent built like a brick house, who should be whipping Dave's sorry ass for his interrogation methods but instead ends up following him around like a bewildered but obedient puppy). This story is really about the men, ok? And how violent they are. When lieutenant Dave goes looking for the information he wants from other men, he just bloodies them if he doesn't get it, and then he gets the information, which by the way, is boring. But the lesson is violence solves problems. Or maybe it's not a lesson, but just a plot point. Either way, it gets very boring. Conflict, then obstacle to solution, then violence to remove obstacle, then solution. Ho hum. Gee, here's another obstacle, I wonder what creative solution Dave will come up with! Oh, look, there's a lead pipe...

Did I mention how boring this movie was?