Rating: 
Summary: Racism from all sides?
Review: One person who reviewed this film asked the question, "where are the black voices?" I think there were black voices in this film. The problem is that those voices were weak, cowardly and ineffectual. It's as if black southerners had no part in the struggle for their own freedom. Freedom and equal rights could only be obtained by the good will of northern whites and the united states government. In some way this white liberal racist attitude isn't much better than the low life klansmen. The best way to view this movie is from the perspective of good versus evil. Good does win out and the evil klan is brought to justice. That does mean something. The production is good and the performances are too. Gene hackman gives an oscar caliber performance and willem defoe is convincing. Certainly an entertaining film but it doesn't reach it's potential as a great film. ...............socks
Rating: 
Summary: SCINTILLATING HISTORY LESSON (AND A GREAT SUSPENSE THRILLER)
Review: A gut-wrenching thriller from start to finish, the movie's breakneck pace is akin to any topnotch suspense movie of our time, while managing an excellent depiction of the 1960's civil rights struggle in the US as well. Despite its theme's sombre contours the film never gets all preachy about the subject. Gene Hackman is picture perfect although his vigilante FBI loose-cannon role occasionally gets a bit far-fetched. A salon scene between him and one of the rogue cops who moonlight as members of Ku-Klux-Klan will remain in your memory for a long time. The racism theme may appear a bit dated to viewers of this generation, but it is integral to the theme (as it was to the actual civil war.) Plus, let's not forget that the movie was made in 1988, and watching it now I still couldn't help getting touched by the identifiable theme. Frankly, I don't really understand what racially oriented quibbles reviewers have with the movie -- this is not some drummed up theme, this is ACTUALLY what happened in Mississippi. A taut, absorbing, and worthwhile film that you must watch if you haven't already.
Rating:
Summary: This Film Was Meant To Be Watched!
Review: Of all the films that have come out on the subject of racial problems, this film is at the top of my list. Maybe that's why I bought it on dvd. Hat's off to Gene Hackman and Willem Dafoe on their performances in this great film. I highly recommend you get on dvd, if you haven't already!
Rating: 
Summary: Mississippi Burning
Review: I have read reviews of Mississippi Burning that range from waxing poetic about its power to those that despise its use of disturbing images to elicite an "autonomic response" of disgust and anger from the audience. Having viewed the movie several times, I realize that the latter's claims are not entirely without merit. That being said, Mississippi Burning is one of my favorite movies. I don't know much about the situation in the South before the present day. For that matter, I don't know much about it now. I have no idea if things were as bad as they were portrayed in the movie. Having seen pictures of lynchings, though, as well as the festival-like atmosphere that accompanied them, I can't imagine that the film was too far off base. The atmosphere of fear and hate that pervades the film is almost visible. It's hard to imagine anyone being able to survive it with their humanity intact. Gene Hackman and Willem Dafoe as the two FBI agents are an interesting study in contrasts. Hackman, as a former Good Ol' Boy sheriff, sees stublety and patience as the necessary tools to solve the three civil rights workers' disappearances. Dafoe, as a Kennedy recruit from the Justice Department, sees an intense show of federal strength and sheer investigative force as the way to go. Dafoe is an idealist, Hackman is a realist. The one thing they have in common is a disgust for the way blacks are treated in the South. I must admit I found Hackman's performance more convincing than Dafoe's, perhaps because his was a more complex character. A product of two worlds, one of racism and one of unity, his must not have been an easy life. And of course, Frances McDormand is brilliant as the long-suffering wife of a Klan member/Sheriff's deputy. She is disgusted with what's going on with blacks in her town, but cannot do anything about it. Her sense of fear and entrapment in a prison of hate have a claustrophobic feel to them that is palpable. I do wish the movie hadn't used quite so many stereotypes in its potrayals of secondary characters, particularly blacks. I don't think there was a single scene in the movie that didn't show blacks as being the victims of some hate crime or other. It got so bad I couldn't see a black face without getting nervous for his or her continued good health. Surely *someone* in the black community decided to say "enough is enough"? Also, the idea that everyone in Mississippi was (a) in the KKK, (b) black, or (c) a passive, approving bystander is an injustice to human nature. Situations are always more complex than they seem, and this one was no different, I'm sure. Oh well, it's not entirely the director's fault. He only had two hours. This movie understands racism, is able to dig into the wellspring of hatred and sniveling and air it to the world. I've never been able to completely comprehend racism on anything other than an intellectual level. That it existed, I never had any doubt, but it's one thing to know it, but it's something else to really *know* it. And once you do know it, it's like staring in a funhouse mirror. You can see the image, but you're unable to force the shape you see into the shape you *think* should be there. This movie provides you with that gut abilty.
Rating:
Summary: Great Drama, Provocative Film.
Review: "Mississippi Burning" is one of the great American crime movies. It's alive, provocative, intelligent and filled with incredible realism seldom seen in typical crime pictures. It is also one of the best portraits of the racial climate in America, especially in the South, in the 60s. Director Alan Parker (Midnight Express, Evita) does not direct a chicken-job here and indeed shows an unrestrained look at the realities of the story. He also has a great, gritty visual style here in the photography that gives the movie a better sense of the atmosphere in the story. The screenplay is gripping because of the suspense in scenes of dialogue between characters, and the tension in the mystery. The performances are also great. Willem Dafoe has an authoritative edge and Gene Hackman comes off as a guy who's seen it all. The characters are also sharply drawn and feel real, the entire movie feels real and has some scenes that could have come out of a documentary. "Mississippi Burning" also reveals truths about the air-headedness of racism and how ugly and violent racist views can become, in a way it shows how racism can cause decay in a society. But this is not just a historical lesson, "Mississippi Burning" is a red-blooded, gritty police drama that also dissects the workings of crime and the people who conspire in crime. You get your money's worth because Parker has made an important film about racism in the 60s, yes, but also has packaged it as an entertaining, gut-wrenching thriller with unpredicatble twists and turns, hateful villains and driven men trying to solve a crime. This is a great movie that deserves more than one viewing.
Rating:
Summary: Hackman at his best.
Review: Gene Hackman was, and still is, one of the best actors of all time. In this film, he plays an FBI agent out to find the truth on what happened with three young boys. Willem Defoe also gives an excellent turn as Gene's FBI partner. This film hit every mark, in acting and writing. Wonderfully shot. Hackman deserved his Oscar nomination.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent historical review of our nations racial problems
Review: Willem DeFoe and Gene Hackman are FBI agents who lead a search in Jessup County Mississippi, to find three young civil rights people who were reported missing. The small town mississippians don't take the athority of the Federal Government agents well, spuring other racial assaults. This Oscar nominated film presents all angles of the racial problems of the 1960's in the deep south. The blacks and all other minorities were too afraid to fight, for fear that the whites would destroy their homes and possibly kill them. Proven by history and shown in this film, sometimes when a problem arises you have to fight and accept all consiquences instead of waiting, which sometimes doesn't solve anything. The acting is supurb and the direction is very well done. Frances McDormand is excellent as the deputies wife.
Rating:
Summary: Racism from all sides?
Review: One person who reviewed this film asked the question, "where are the black voices?" I think there were black voices in this film. The problem is that those voices were weak, cowardly and ineffectual. It's as if black southerners had no part in the struggle for their own freedom. Freedom and equal rights could only be obtained by the good will of northern whites and the united states government. In some way this white liberal racist attitude isn't much better than the low life klansmen. The best way to view this movie is from the perspective of good versus evil. Good does win out and the evil klan is brought to justice. That does mean something. The production is good and the performances are too. Gene hackman gives an oscar caliber performance and willem defoe is convincing. Certainly an entertaining film but it doesn't reach it's potential as a great film. ...............socks
Rating:
Summary: Gene Hackman delivers again
Review: This film version of the murder of three civil rights workers in Mississippi during the summer of 1964 is a sobering reminder of a time in the not-too-distant past when racism and injustice held sway in the South. The story is a straightforward account of the efforts of the FBI to investigate the disappearance of Schwerner, Goodman and Chaney, and to find their bodies, if they were killed, as is widely surmised throughout the Bureau. That Hoover's G-men run into a wall of silence and outright hostility from the townspeople is no surprise, who figure the whole thing was hatched by Attorney General Bobby Kennedy to show white Mississippians in a bad light, and that the three missing men got just what was coming to them. The film has a great performance by Gene Hackman, perhaps the best actor around today. Hackman's Anderson is the agent who senses where the trail of guilt may lead and breaks open the case, using his Southern small-town charm and wit on the sheriff's wife, a good and decent woman who's surrounded by the ugliness of racism and has to live with intolerance every day of her life until she can stand it no more. Frances McDormand is compelling as the unhappy Mrs. Pell and her work is nearly in the same class as Hackman's. Willem Dafoe registers strongly as the FBI agent in charge whose by-the-book method of police work rubs fellow agent Anderson the wrong way.
Rating: 
Summary: "You can't handle the truth!"
Review: Like "JFK" and "Murder in the First," MB shows us how the phrase "basedon/inspiredby a true story" REALLY means "at most maybe 2% of this story is true, and the rest is BS." Before you say that it doesn't really matter if a film like MB doesn't stick as closely to the facts as it could have, consider this: if you read the rest of the reviews of this movie, or of the other two mentioned above, you will find about half of the time, it is quite clear that people are getting their history from such films. Time and again, reviewers repeat the demonstrably false statements made on the back of the box or that come from the film's press kit. The reason this matters is simple. When one adapts a book for a screenplay -- an art in itself -- one has to make certain changes due to the fact that each media has its own unique limitations. The important thing, then, is not so much faithfulness to the literal text, but faithfulness to the SUBTEXT and SPIRIT of the original material. However, if you're going to base a film on real events and people, it is vitally important to get the essential facts straight! The post-modern notion that "mythic truth" (see "JFK") is more important than historical facts is right out of George Orwell's "1984"! Aside from the fact that the story is almost entirely populated by liberal Hollywood stereotypes, it misses the mark on this important point. The case was not broken by clever investigative techniques, contrary to what Hoover would have us believe. But neither was the case broken by Gestapo tactics, as depicted in the film. It was broken by bribing one of the participants to "rat out" his fellow conspirators! I could have given this film four stars IF it had fictionalized itself to the point of NOT trying to reference itself as basedon/inspiredby "a true story." When I saw this film in Milwaukee the summer of its release, I was one of only maybe a dozen or two people in the audience. In one scene, after taking one of the killers on a car ride and tricking him into giving them information, the FBI agents drop him off in the black part of town. As they drive off, he looks around nervously at all the residents who are eyeing him with suspicion and curiosity. A half-dozen rows behind me, a black teenage boy shouted out, "Get him!" Maybe he was just making a bad joke in poor taste. Maybe he didn't stop to think how his comments might sound to others in the audience. Maybe he even meant me. But maybe it should be obvious by now why this sort of propagandistic film-making is dangerous. I also can't help thinking how many white supremacists who know how far from the truth this film is in some places have been further confirmed in their racist views by the fact that film-makers felt they had to lie to make their point.... Parker, Hackman, and Defoe are all talented people, but when they lend their talents to an effort such as this, are they really any different from Leni Riefenstahl...? I never needed Hollywood to tell me that racism is wrong. And I'm sick and tired of being presumed guilty of racism until I can prove I'm a liberal Democrat and a card-carrying member of the ACLU. Telling the TRUE story -- let's say, at least 90% true -- of what happened in MB would be a far more compelling film, as well as a far more persuasive argument against racism. Instead, we are treated to the usual Hollywood sterotype that the problem of racism is strictly a matter of non-liberal whites oppressing their black moral superiors. And so, in the end, the film actually manages to do more to help perpetuate the cycle of racism than expose or defuse it. The solution is simple, people: treat each and every individual as an individual, and not as a member of any group, and without any preconceived notions about characteristics which the individual has not yet displayed. If it had actually happened the way it was depicted in the film, "Mississippi Burning" would be more deserving of the accolades that some reviewers have heaped upon it. But, at the risk of being labeled "politically incorrect" myself, I must give MB only one star, precisely because the film itself is "politically correct."
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