Tommy Lee Jones as a recovering alcoholic cop in Louisiana, investigating the brutal murder of a young woman. Which also ends up tying in to the murder of a black man decades ago, when his body is discovered by an actor during the shooting of a no doubt highly inaccurate Civil War movie. John Goodman's in there as, a former criminal of some sort, who now is getting movies made in Louisiana and figures he's hot stuff now.
It's mostly a typical murder mystery. Detective flails about trying to put pieces together. John Goodman tries to use his influence (money talks) to derail the investigation, and when that fails, people start dying. Potential witnesses, helpful detectives, innocent bystanders. I think it mostly pulls the different plot threads together well. The decades old death never falls out of the story entirely, as Jones will periodically speak to someone about it that leads him a little further on his way.
The unusual bit is partway through, Jones gets a soda dosed with LSD and starts seeing a Confederate general who basically tells him not to lose heart. It continues long after the drugs are likely out of his system. This is apparently a sort of development common to the series of books this is based on. I don't know how much it works here. It is sort of funny the Confederate keeps trying to be supportive, and Jones mostly just thinks he must be nuts to be seeing this guy.
There's sort of a subplot with the actor that found the murdered black man being an active alcoholic trying to be pals and just making an ass of himself all the time. That subplot peters out partway until the very end when the movie does one of those, "so-and-so went on to blahblahblah" bits. Frances McDormand plays Jones' wife, but she seems stuck playing the concerned spouse of a cop we get in most movies of this sort. Not a role with much meat on it.
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