Great acting and directing ...but a severely compromised script.

Rating: 7/10 (24 September 2005)

THE FILM: The third of Parker's 80's heyday films following Birdy and Angel Heart,Mississippi Burning is an acting masterclass.From Hackman and Defoe in the leads to all the supporting cast. As per usual it looks great and has some strong images. For all this it gets 7 out 10.
THE STORY: Is based on the real events of the murder of 3 civil rights activists in 1964 Mississippi and the subsequent FBI investigation into their deaths. The problem is not with the ongoing story of how the Fed's crack the case.This is fiction based on fact and as a police story it works fine.
THE COMPROMISE: 1, the FBI. J.Edger Hoover in 1964 was possibly the most powerful man in the country, with a file on everyone of importance or power.The FBI was his private fiefdom. Mr.Hoover believed Martin Luther King was a Communist and had no sympathy for the Civil Rights Movement.This is mentioned in one small line of script.The Bureau would have to go after murderers but was certainly on no crusade. Mr.Hoover detested the Kennedys and only kept his job because he had enough info to destroy them.So how the Defoe character, as a Kennedy man , got beyond a filing job is hard to say. Mr.Hoover used Hollywood to create the myth of the G-man ,this myth is still alive and kicking in this film.The Gene Hackman character had been a Mississippi sheriff and obviously part of a Bureau dirty tricks squad and we are expected to believe he has a bleeding heart under his badge. What would have made it interesting if his character was more truthful.The FBI was an all white agency and it certainly was not politically correct.Mr Hoover's views were no secret so rascism would certainly not effect anybody'career.Again this is hinted at in his speech about his father. 2,the KKK, It seems the whole white community in the South is a member which oversimplifies the situation a lot. Also, it does not show the main cause of the hatred was the Southern establishment,the wealthy landowners who encouraged the politicians,the police and judiciary to preach segregation as a classic measure of divide and rule of the poor- whites and African-Americans. It also ignores the fact that segregation had been twisted into the very fabric of the Southern states post- Confederacy identity. 3,the African-Americans, The docile passivity,gospel singing over ashes of churches and the lack of anger is patronising in the extreme.The Civil rights movement was born in South and the churches were its most vocal advocates.
Maybe if this film had been made in the 70's rather than the 80's these major background issues would not have been ignored.