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: Great movie
Review: if I picked one movie from the 80's to be my favorite, it would be this one, it's great.
Rating: 
Summary: Pure manipulation
Review: "Mississippi Burning" concentrates on the efforts of two White FBI agents -- Willen Dafoe as agent Ward and Gene Hackman as agent Anderson -- to find the Ku Klux Klan killers of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner, a Black man and two Whites. It's a famous case. But [director] Alan Parker does little more than manipulate audiences into cheering a terrorist FBI campaign in which the agency, under the directorship of notorious King-hater J. Edgar Hoover, uses the Klan's own vigilante tactics against the Klansmen. Of course it didn't matter that Hoover actually hated Blacks. The moral corruption in "Mississipi Burning" is in its style and its aesthetics. Parker's overbearing techniques, his relentless "whomping" of the audience, pulverizes any historical fact in the flick into bloody irrelevance. There is no room for history, ethics or justice in "Burning" - it exists only as exploitive propaganda. Parker's treatment of White Southerners as in-bred gargoyles is not only racist, it's misanthropic. The Blacks are nothing more than victims - not unlike the teenagers in Friday the 13th. Making the Klan the villains and the Blacks the victims is meaningless when you treat both as if they were undifferentiated subhuman cyphers. But the movie is not sloppy. Every image in "Mississippi Burning", regardless of content or context, is meticulously and self-consciously composed -- an ultra-polished style that reveals Parker's background as a director of television commercials. The defenders of this movie have remarked on the film's undeniable power. Well, of course it's "powerful". Any movie that exploits images of hooded figures killing people can hardly help but be "powerful" at the very least. But power corrupts.....Is it a film about Civil rights? Law enforcement? Vigilantism? Nope. It's a film about using cinema as a sledge hammer to pound knee-jerk reactions out of people, compelling them to kneel, mindlessly and helplessly, before the altar of "powerful" moviemaking.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent movie
Review: If you like history or hate...this is the movie for you. Two FBI agents are searching for 3 missing civil rights workers, who got what they deserved by the KKK, in Mississippi. It is a good movie about a true story that happened in 1964. It has some funny parts to it, like when they hang the...from a tree, or when they bomb the black churches. It also has some sad parts to it, when they busted the KKK and sent them to jail. Overall it is a good show of what life should be like today.
Rating: 
Summary: Great!
Review: I cannot wait till march 13th, this is a good movie that has significent facts about racism, with powerful performances. Almost as good as JFK!
Rating:
Summary: Powerful Drama
Review: Mississippi Burning is griping and powerful civil rights era drama that is based on real life events. Three civil rights workers (two white, one black) are missing and feared dead. They were last sceen in a small Mississippi town. The FBI sends down a team of agents led by Willem Dafoe and Gene Hackman. Mr. Dafoe is a young, idealistic agent while Mr. Hackman is one time small town Mississippi sheriff with alot views on how the case should be handled. The two bang heads, before they eventually come to a common ground. The town is segregated and the Ku Klux Klan runs rampant. The film's graphic depiction of racism and hatred is disturbing. It is difficult to image that something this grotesque and reviling could happen in this country, but it unfortunately did. Francis McDormand is the wife of Brad Dourif who is town's deputy sheriff. Despite the fact her husband is knee deep in the missing kids situation and is a hateful and violent man, she rises above it and shows compassion to her fellow man. There is alot of sexual tension between her and Mr. Hackman and it adds a calming touch to the turbulent surroundings. Mississippi Burning is a film that is movie making at it's best. It comments on society, makes you think, educates you and in the end entertains.
Rating:
Summary: Top notch cinema
Review: Often criticised for its white heroes and weak black characters, and no doubt detested by Mississipians for its stereotyped evil Southern white folks, this is still excellent drama.Although a well paced story, the script, in terms of dialogue is sometimes clumsy and you can often predict the next line. In the light of this, the actors' performance is mightily impressive. The entire cast are wonderful. Michael Rooker smoulders as a violent racist thug, exuding violence. Brad Dourif, before he was doomed to voice Chucky movies, underplays his smug young KKK deputy to great effect in his best role since One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest. Frances McDormand, in the only real female role, is fantastic in the part of the torn wife. And, just as importantly, every one of the more minor roles are filled by teriffic character actors. Even with this competition, Hackman steals every scene as the jaded Southern G-man reluctantly following the orders of the hot-shot, crusading college boy Willem Dafoe. This is as good a performance as you'll see anywhere from anyone.
The 1988 best actor award went to Hoffman for Rain Man, but if you look back now, it was a travesty, Hackman was just brilliant. Whether this is an educational film or not is open to question. In its historical detail almost certainly not, all the FBI are good guys, the blacks hapless victims, and the Mississipians backward inbred racists. But in its portrayal of a social and political climate in the South of the 60's, it almost certainly is (Non Americans like myself, unfamiliar with the history of the time will be shocked at just how recently this film is set). But, perhaps that is missing the point, a combination of brilliant performances, a great story and direction all add up to a hugely entertaining experience. And unlike JFK, Mississippi Burning does not rely on its historical credibility for its cinematic one. A must see film.
Rating:
Summary: School review
Review: I was only 16 when I saw this movie as part of a history class. We were studying the Civil Rights movement. To have such a moving, powerful drama to depict what times were like was very helpfull. Sure, Parker never made the movie to be a documentary and it isn't. It gives an idea of the feeling around Mississippi and is worth the watch.
Rating:
Summary: Lacking voices African-American
Review: gene Hackman was good in this film but it doesn't answer any Questions.Where are The African-American voices? where is the Struggle? this film is too Slick&glossy for it's own good.a story about Racisim given a White Spin&Take.typical Hollywood formula.
Rating:
Summary: Another film that shows the dark side of racism.....
Review: Now this is another film that shows the reallity of racism. The movie was so real that it showed myself about how much white people were violence and self-conceit. But after seeing movies like this, I always realize that there is one true thing when people make these movies. It's that the colored always get free just because of the white. Think about it. Why can't other colored people can't save and give love to the other colored people? That is just a different story to the colored. This also means that still, white people are better than the colored....... I give it 3.5 out of 5.
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