Great Drama

Rating: Null/10 (27 February 2008)

Mississippi Burning (1988)
**** (out of 4)
Alan Parker's film about two FBI agents (Gene Hackman, Willem Dafoe) who travel to Mississippi to try and see what happened to three missing Civil Rights workers. I'm really not sure how to rate this film because on one hand it's an incredibly entertaining police drama that gets your blood boiling at the opening shot and it just gets hotter and hotter as the film moves along. I was having a great time watching this film and then something entered my mind that made me rather nervous. Should I be enjoying a film with this subject matter? I'm really not sure if the film is proper entertainment because even though it's based on a true story the director made no secret that events were changed up for entertainment value. The images in this film are rather harrowing and at times incredibly hard to watch but the viewer, or at least I wanted to see the racist killed. In that sense this entertainment is more like a Death Wish film when I'm not sure if should be. The images of blacks being beaten, raped and hung got me angry and my blood boiling but was it because of great film-making or because seeing these images would make any human angry? I'm really not sure how great the storytelling was but again, on one hand, it kept me entertained all the way through.
What does work are the performances by the rather amazing cast. Dafoe has always been an underrated actor and his calm approach in the film is perfectly done and Frances McDormand comes off very good as well. Brad Dourif, R. Lee Ermey, Gailard Sartain, Michael Rooker and Pruitt Taylor Vince play just some of the racist and all of them are bone chilling in their performances. The group of men, on an entertainment level, make for some great movie villains. The real standout here is Hackman who delivers another brilliant performance and really has the toughest job in the film. At one point of the film he's laughing about the racist subject matter and even telling joke but in a blink of an eye Hackman changes his character to show the anger than any human would. The way Hackman juggles his character through so many emotions is a real treat to watch and in my opinion this is one of the best performances from the actor.
Once again, I'm torn on the entertainment value a film like this should deliver but after thinking about it for a while I guess this is a perfect film. From what I've read, a lot of controversy surrounded this film as many people felt too many facts were changed to make the FBI look good or whatever. As I write this I'm just going to say that it might be entertainment but it doesn't coward away from showing the horrors of the South at the time.