'BOYS' N THE HOOF

Don't know about you, but I've found everything Tommy Lee Jones has done since his terrific performance in The Fugitive to be pretty disappointing. He was absurdly over-the-top in Natural Born Killers, tediously low-key in The Client, mannered without wit in Blown Away, and just plain mannered in Cobb. So it's nice to report that with The Good Old Boys (TNT, March 5, 8-10 p.m.), in which he both stars and makes his directorial debut, Jones is doing first- rate, surprising work again. In bringing one of Elmer Kelton's sturdy Western novels to the small screen, Jones (who also cowrote the teleplay with J.T. Allen) seems well aware that this project will be compared with his other rootin'-tootin' TV movie, 1989's Lonesome Dove. The actor-director accordingly avoids the haunted, elegiac tone of Larry McMurtry's Dove and takes care to reproduce Kelton's more easygoing, gentle melancholy. Jones plays Hewey Calloway, a 20th-century cowboy who fought alongside Teddy Roosevelt in Cuba, talks to his horse, and prides himself on his steer- roping skill. After an absence of two years, he shows up at the farm of his brother, Walter (Terry Kinney), and Walter's grumpy wife, Eve (Frances McDormand). Actor-playwright Sam Shepard ambles in as Hewey's old buddy Snort Yarnell and does an excellent, snaggle-toothed Walter Brennan impersonation during much of his brief screen time. While staying with his brother, Hewey finds himself attracted to the new schoolteacher in town, Spring Renfro (Sissy Spacek). Much of the movie is spent with these two waltzing around their emotions. They make a great couple, anyway; when Hewey goes to caress Spring, Spacek's delicate face disappears in Jones' huge hands. Jones' achievement as a director is to make the small, quiet details of The Good Old Boys the most interesting. This is the rare sort of modern movie that turns a scene of neighbors sitting around chatting while eating homemade ice cream into a lovely moment you wish wouldn't end. It's a sweet-tempered film, but it isn't drippy; when a woman snaps, ''Kinda cowboys we got around these days, a woman'd be better off with a good dog and a hot-water bottle,'' you know she's not kidding around. Boys has its action scenes-a fistfight or two, a pretty exciting steer- roping competition-but it works best as a set of character studies. And as its chief good old boy, Jones' Hewey is a striking creation. Playing against the stone-faced shrewdie he nailed in The Fugitive, Jones cracks his weathered face into a big, goofy smile throughout much of Boys. The plot points are as loose as Hewey's loping gait-Will Hewey settle down? Will Walter and Eve keep their failing farm from the bank?-and you could not say The Good Old Boys quivers with dramatic tension. But Jones' movie doesn't need any cranked-up suspense or wet-eyed climax to be entertaining. Its small- scale virtues are so quirky and novel as to constitute a constant, happy surprise. A- -

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