I approached this movie on DVD with a lot of curiosity. Here's a movie directed by acclaimed French director Bertrand Tavernier. It's based on a novel by crime fiction legend James Lee Burke.

It stars Tommy Lee Jones (who is in every single scene of the movie). Plus a whole boatload of actors who would never appear in crap, including Mary Steenbergen, Ned Beatty, Levon Helm (well, he's actually a musician, but the same principal applies), John Goodman, Kelly MacDonald (the Scottish actress who played Josh Brolin's wife in No Country for Old Men), Peter Sarsgaard and blues musician legend Buddy Guy. And the director of the Civil War movie-within-a-movie is independent film legend John Sayles.

And this went straight to DVD? Or so I am told. What the hell?

Full disclosure: I am a huge fan of crime fiction but have only read one novel by James Lee Burke. Reason? I don't like nature descriptions in crime fiction. And Burke is seriously devoted to moss, and swamps, and alligators, and other swampy stuff ... for God's sake, his hero, Cajun homicide detective Dave Robicheaux, has a daughter with a pet raccoon.

However, cinematically, all these "sins" work in this movie.

I think I know why this movie went under the radar. It is slow moving. We follow detective Dave R. as he goes about his business in Cajun territory in southern Louisiana, where you're black or you have a French last name. Sometimes, probably, both.

Someone is killing and mutilating prostitutes on Dave R's turf. There seem to be ties to a gangster called Babyfeet -- John Goodman in a wicked performance. There's also a 40-year-old lynching that may be connected.

Meanwhile, someone slips Dave R. some LSD in his soda pop (he's a recovering alcoholic) and he begins getting advice from a hallucinated John Bell Hood, the famous Civil War general. It's good advice, as it turns out. Hood's played by rock drummer Levon Helm.

And if you don't know who Levon Helm is, just go away. Or listen to "Revolution Blues" by Neil Young and hear genius rock drumming.

This is a movie with narration (by Dave R.), something which I normally hate. But it is artfully written prose and it adds to the movie.

This is not a thriller. But it doesn't plod either. It immerses you in a time and a place in southern Louisiana and shows you how a series of crimes plays out amid lots of people living in really wet neighborhoods. Hurricane Katrina damage makes a cameo.

I found it slow but utterly fascinating.