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Mist opportunity: why you'll find Tommy Lee Jones's latest great performance only on DVD.

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It had the makings of a tense, knotty neo-noir, a kind of gumbo-flavored No Country for Old Men: two Academy Awardwinning actors in an adaptation of one of James Lee Burke's critically acclaimed thrillers, directed by a veteran French filmmaker with along-standing affinity for American crime fiction. Even as recently as February, when In the Electric Mist premiered in competition at the prestigious Berlin International Film Festival, it seemed poised to become one of the year's major cinematic events.

As with most noir, however, looks were deceiving. Less than a month later, the movie--which stars Tommy Lee Jones as troubled detective Dave Robicheaux; Mary Steenburgen as his wife, Bootsie; and an eclectic-bordering-on-bizarre supporting cast including John Goodman, Ned Beatty, Peter Sarsgaard, and the Band's Levon Helm--turned up in the United States on DVD, in a version approximately fifteen minutes shorter than the one shown in Berlin. Its producers had...

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