Vile, but not for the reasons its detractors advance

Rating: 5/10 (4 April 2002)

Well, "Mississippi Burning" can be acquitted on one charge, at least - it doesn't glorify the FBI, which, as an organisation, did all it could to hamper the civil rights movement. The heroes are two agents assigned to cover a particular case. They may or may not be in sympathy with the organisation to which they belong; my guess is that they aren't. There's certainly something curious about making the heroes of this particular story white FBI agents, but this isn't in itself objectionable - at least, not under the circumstances.
But the film is still morally repulsive, for reasons that it worries me that no-one has pointed out. When Anderson and Ward travel to Mississippi to investigate the murder of civil rights activists, they run into a stone wall. Whites are too bigoted to talk to them and blacks are too terrified of reprisals. If they charge a white man with a crime of violence they know that no local jury will convict and no local judge will sentence. What can they do?
They try for prosecution in a federal court, obviously - so far, so good. And to make absolutely certain that their charges stick they play dirty: they recruit thugs and extract information under torture and the threat of extreme violence. If there's a single character whose actions we're meant to approve of, it's Anderson (invested with all the charm Gene Hackman has to offer) - and we see him wielding a razor blade, threatening to slash someone's throat. He's not, in this scene, seriously attempting to find anything out, or even trying to coerce his victim into cooperating. It's a mere display of strength and will. When I first saw "Mississippi Burning" I was so infuriated by the racism that I managed to persuade myself (reluctantly, I hope) to cheer him on. I was nearly sixteen. I'm glad I don't have to admit to having been any older. Looking at the movie today, the fascist nastiness which I had talked myself into overlooking turns out to be the dominant element.