The Good Old Boys

This leisurely-paced prairie yarn allows top flight actors the chance to chew on their farmland roles while rolling each twang of their regional accents over on their tongues. Given the slightness of the material, actor-director Tommy Lee Jones milks the gentle crises for all their savoriness and lets his characters ramble on to self-awareness as if taking a long time to react was a quantitative way of measuring honesty.

Roving cattle-man Hewey Calloway (Tommy Lee Jones) temporarily tires of pulling up stakes and heads his weary bones toward the homestead of his brother Walter (Terry Kinney), Walter's wife Eve (Frances McDormand), and their sons Tommy (Blayne We...