Mississippi Burning (1988)

Directed by Alan Parker. Starring Gene Hackman, Willem Dafoe, Brad Dourif, Frances McDormand, Gailard Sartain, R. Lee Ermey, Michael Rooker, Stephen Tobolowsky, Kevin Dunn, Pruitt Taylor Vince, Badja Djola, Park Overall. [R]

Searing, racially-charged drama loosely based on fact, with a pair of FBI agents—a former southern sheriff (Hackman) and a square-jawed Justice Department transfer (Dafoe)—traveling into Mississippi to investigate the disappearance of three civil rights workers in 1964. Manipulative and heavy-handed at times, to be sure, and pretty poor as a history lesson, but the filmmakers clearly intended this to be a gripping thriller, not a docudrama; choosing a real life case and tilting the perspective may not have been the wisest choice, but the film does exactly what it sets out to do, and delivers a dramatic powerhouse in terms of incendiary entertainment. Terrific performances (especially from Hackman, McDormand and Dourif) and Parker’s forceful but composed direction make up for weaknesses in the script; vivid, Oscar-winning photography from Peter Biziou. A more true-to-life TV-movie, Murder in Mississippi, was produced a couple years later depicting the events leading up to the murder of the civil rights workers.

81/100