Robert Altman's dessert of a murder-mystery-without-the-murder movie is set during Holy Week in Holly Springs, Mississippi. When Jewel Mae "Cookie" Orcutt (Patricia Neal) is found dead, good-old-boy sheriff Lester Boyle (Ned Beatty), neophyte sheriff's deputy Jason Brown (Chris O'Donnell), and visiting hot-shots forensics expert Eddie Pitts (Matt Malloy) and investigator Otis Tucker (Courtney B. Vance) have to sift through possible suspects including Cookie's friend Willis (Charles S. Dutton), her nieces Camille Dixon (Glenn Close) and Cora Dixon Duvall (Julianne Moore), and her great-niece Emma Duvall (Liv Tyler). There's no major message in this Cookie, only a fortune that reads, "You will have a good time."