Mississippi Burning
|
Our Price: $29.69 Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours Buy Used: from $10.35 (click here) Category: DVD See more DVD releases |
|---|
Buy this DVD movie at online store in your country
Canada
Canada
Movie Reviews of Mississippi Burning
Movie Review: Powerful and Impressively Acted
Summary: 5 Stars
Three civil rights campaigners are shot dead by local KKK rednecks in rural 1960s Mississippi with the active involvement and complicity of the local cops. Along come two very different Federal agents (Gene Hackman and Willem Dafoe) charged with finding out what has happened. They quickly rub the locals up the wrong way so Dafoe decides to bring in reinforcements. Lots and lots of reinforcements. Soon things start to get very nasty indeed.
This is an Alan Parker movie so it's all a bit over the top and excessively melodramatic. Perhaps too, if one is feeling unkind, a bit moralistically full of itself: of course that's somewhat inevitable given the subject matter but Parker does rather succumb to the temptation to lay it on with a trowel. But there are good reasons not to feel too unkind as there's much here to be impressed by. It's one of the best southern based movies with civil rights themes of recent-ish years, better than `Ghosts of Mississippi' and miles better than `A Time to Kill' if maybe not quite in the same league as the wonderful `In the Heat of the Night'. An extremely effective score and some first class cinematography help it along no end. But what stands out is the acting: Brad Dourif, Michael Rooker and Gailard Sartain splendidly horrid as the racist baddies, Dafoe a welcome oasis of relative subtlety and restraint as Agent Ward. But above all Frances MacDormand, characteristically perfect as Dourif's unhappily married wife and Gene Hackman putting in an utterly incendiary performance as maverick fed Agent Anderson, right up there with `The Conversation' and `Unforgiven' among that tremendous actor's most gripping and brilliantly hardcore performances.
Movie Review: SCINTILLATING HISTORY LESSON (AND A GREAT SUSPENSE THRILLER)
Summary: 5 Stars
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.
Movie Review: A film to savour
Summary: 5 Stars
I saw this film at a cinema in south London when it first came out. It was a hot day, the cinema had no air conditioning, and it was like the deep south. I don't know how many times I've seen the film since, but I've rented it, bought the video, bought the DVD and watched it on television - so a hell of lot.
Despite these repeated viewings it never loses its power and that comes from two things. Firstly its subject matter and secondly from a powerhouse performance by Gene Hackman. Willam Dafoe, Frances McDormand and the rest of the cast are uniformly excellent - Hackman is better.
Loosely based on a true event in the 60's, it concerns the dissappearance of two human rights activists. The opening to the film is one of the most tense and memorable scences(and Hackman isn't even in it). Dafoe and Hackman do a variation on the good cop, bad cop routine with bad cop tactics being the final strategy!
Its a great film, which if you haven't seen, you should do so now.
Movie Review: GIMME A DR. PEPPER, QUICK!
Summary: 5 Stars
The voice of legendary WBZ personality Carl deSuze had none of its buoyancy that morning in 1964: "and if we sound differently this morning,it's because we feel differently..we all are different this morniing". I soon learned that the bodies of 3 civil rights workers had finally been found,dead as expected,shot then buried in an earthen dam in Philadelphia, Mississippi.The radio is not a medium well suited to cover stories such as this one; film and the cinema are highly superior (if used properly and in context). "Mississippi Burning" is a moving experience; heck,any number of actors could have played the lead roles. It's the number of top quality scenes that become etched in one's mind: the swamp search, the hanging outside the church, the burning cross, the backroom bar, Hackman administering a "close shave", the wife beating,the molotov cocktail, the courtroom, and countless other outrages make multiple viewings almost mandatory. See the movie, buy it, just don't miss it!Movie Review: Mississippi Burning
Summary: 5 Stars
In 1964 three civil rights workers from the North disappear in a small Mississippi town and the FBI are sent to investigate. Agent in charge Alan Ward does everything by the book. Agent Rupert Anderson however was a Sheriff in Mississippi before joining the FBI and understands the local culture. He's also prepared to bend the rules a bit if it will help in the investigation. They focus on the Sheriff's office and Deputy Clinton Pell in particular as they think he may be the weakest link in the conspiracy. As the investigation intensifies however, the KKK launch a series of attacks against the local African-American population. With no one on either side prepared to talk, Ward agrees to Anderson using his own unorthodox methods to learn what happened that night and who killed the three men. Mississippi Burning is one of the best movies I have ever seen. It is important and it is entertaining and really has something to say.