Mississippi Burning

1988 racism movie

Rating: 14/20

Plot: Some FBI guys venture into a small Mississippi town to find out why it's burning.

After a sad opening shot of two water fountains, some arson, and a seemingly innocuous Mississippi billboard that still somehow manages to be chilling, I probably expected a little more from this. It's almost worth it just to hear Gene Hackman say "sumbitch" like he thinks he's The Rock or something, and I did enjoy watching both him and Dafoe. The auxiliary performances are all fine too, giving this period and place authenticity. Jessup County is alive, becoming this hatred-fueled character itself, and there are striking images of this place that a viewer in 2018 realizes probably hasn't actually changed all that much.

I'm not sure director Alan Parker and screenwriter Chris Gerolmo needed to play around with the story as much as they did. The facts, in this case, might have been just as good as the fiction they create. The various clashes in this movie should probably be more interesting than they actually end up being. You've got the racial division in Jessup County, of course, and that's displayed pretty much how you'd figure it would be in a movie from the 1980s. You've also got the clash of Northern and Southern ideals, the clash between outsiders and the inhabitants of a small town like this, and the clash between FBI procedure and whatever Gene Hackman's character wants to do. That last one is the one we can blame for this going off the rails a bit.

Shots of Gene Hackman wearing a towel: 0

He does get a great monologue about a mule though.