A very good movie

Rating: Null/10 (21 October 2002)

Contains Spoilers Mississippi Burning is a riveting dramatization of the real-life investigation into the disappearance of three 1960's civil rights workers in rural Mississippi.
Despite being criticized by many for sticking pretty close to fact. Movie-a- Day.com blasts it for telling the story from a white perspective instead of a black perspective. I feel that the accuracy of the dramatization is of the utmost importance; "perspective" is irrelevant. Despite that, Mississippi Burning remains one of the most poignant, yet underrated films dealing with racism and justice in 1960's southern America, certainly on par with 1967's In the Heat of the Night.
The northern-born, by-the-book FBI agent Ward (Willem Dafoe) is partnered with Agent Anderson (Gene Hackman,) a former small town Alabama sheriff to find them, but meet with resistance from Mayor Tilman (R. Lee Ermey) and Sheriff Ray Stuckey (Gailard Sartain) and an unsympathetic cast of police officers and townspeople, many of whose members are also members of the Ku Klux Klan.
You can cut the tension between Anderson and Ward with a knife, but when his methods of getting to the truth fail, Ward is forced to cede to the older, wiser Anderson. Through fostering a genuinely friendly relationship with the wife of a vicious Deputy Clinton Pell (played very convincingly by Frances McDormand and Brad Dourif respectively,) Anderson is able to learn that the civil rights workers were killed and buried in a nearby quarry. When Mrs. Pell is assaulted by her husband at the behest of his Klan buddy Frank Bailey (played by the always dependable Michael Rooker,) to keep her quiet, Anderson wreaks havoc on those he knows are responsible.
Stephen Tobolowsky also has a small, but impressive role as Clayton Townley.
The end of the film sees most of the defendants found guilty and sentenced to various prison sentences. Mayor Tilman, although never implicated in the murders, commits suicide.