Mississippi Burning

Mississippi Burning (1988) takes off from the 1964 disappearance of three civil rights workers in Mississippi, Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner. Alan Parker builds it around two FBI agents: a young one who works by the book and an older one who knows the region and does not. That is also the film's problem. In the real story the FBI was not a friend of the movement; in those same years Hoover's bureau was targeting Martin Luther King. Here the rescuers are two white federal officers, and Black characters are largely a frightened, silent background. Coretta Scott King was among the many who objected. Parker's defence was that it is fiction inspired by real events. Set that aside and the filmmaking is formidable. Peter Biziou won an Oscar for the cinematography, and Gene Hackman's older agent is among the best things he ever did. It runs 128 minutes. Good for: the American South of the sixties, tense investigative drama, and watching Hackman work. Less good for: the racist violence is heavy going. If you want historical fidelity this will mislead you, because the people who actually drove that struggle are not its subject here.