Mississippi Burning (dir. Alan Parker, 1988) - EveryFilmIWatch Review
Download the Mississippi Burning screenplay PDF for personal, private use here.
Mississippi Burning is one of the films in the life and career of Gene Hackman which cemented his status as a powerful actor with enormous range, even in a single role. The film itself is excellent — a taut, intense, gritty crime drama rooted in the racial turmoil of the 1960s Deep South. The Mississippian sun’s rays seem to pierce the screen as temperatures and tempers flare during an investigation into the disappearance of three civil rights workers — one black, two Jewish —deep in Ku Klux Klan territory.
It’s not so much that we don’t know what’s happened to the boys; everyone in all of Mississippi could tell you that. It’s the desperate and difficult experience of watching two FBI agents, the volatile, ruthless Hackman character, and his by-the-book partner, played with discipline by a young Willem Dafoe, stonewalled and abused by Klan-loving local police, residents and even the black community themselves. This last group sees the cost and danger to their lives of speaking up for what they know is right. It’s a total stalemate, broken only by the dogged indignation of the two agents who, each in their own way, tear their way through the small-town ignorance and bigotry around them.
The film is careful not to attribute their actions to their morality. They’re realists driven by procedure and a shared disgust for the corruption of local police and government. This pair makes no attempts to cast themselves as saviours — one of the most interesting dynamics is watching Hackman play a man with a few unsavoury opinions of his own as he realises that he’s at the heart of a huge moment of change and progression. Frances McDormand, as the torn wife of one of the film’s most repugnant characters, is extraordinary, an early showing of her undeniable potency as an actor. This is one of the great films on race — one whose relevance has echoed across the decades.
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