Review of Mississippi Burning (1988) by Tommy H — 17 Apr 2015

I thought it was terrible. The whole point of the film is summed up in the last shot of a broken tombstone that reads "1964 - not forgotten." Maybe they should have left this story buried.

The first hour of the movie put me in a real sour mood. Nothing but racist talk and violence. If you're a real racist you might actually get a kick out of this movie. There's no characters to like. Everyone acts in a stiff way and boring way to pull off the dumb redneck. Dafoe is very bland and a bit autistic, I think. A weird thing I noticed is that he sounds exactly like Agent Smith in The Matrix. He even wears a suit like Agent Smith. Hackman's name in the movie is Anderson and Dafoe says it like in The Matrix, like there's a period between each syllable of his name. The point of the appearance and speech pattern of Agent Smith was to show him as just a generic, unnoticeable nobody. Someone who would blend into a crowd. A faceless computer program. It was appropriate in The Matrix, but Dafoe's Agent Smith impression made the character distant and unreadable. He's dull, but at least he's a good man. Hackman's character made no sense to me. The way his character develops, he starts out racist enough, especially with all his black jokes, to not like him. He's also creepy around women. He seems like a redneck himself at times. But then half way through the film, for no real explained reason, the movie acts as if he was always a nice guy. Very weird. I still didn't like him. But at least he was the only person in the entire movie to give a lively performance. Also, I'm not use to seeing people behave this way in movies so the characters seemed very unfamiliar to me. It didn't elevate the cinematic experience, but if they were proper representations of people back then it's interesting and unpleasant.

I didn't care for the other characters either because I didn't like them or I didn't know who they are. If I was black I don't think I'd feel empowered by this film. It's just a grim reminder of a past event. It's depressing. A young black boy is in it for a little bit. He doesn't do much, and then he's gone for the whole movie. Besides that boy, I hate to say it, but it felt to me like the black people in the movie were just props in a film about white people. The most glaring example is how through the movie were shown hate crime after hate crime, and after each crime things settle down and the movie resumes like nothing happen. But when Frances McDormand got beaten up that's when the CIA agents lose their cool and show a little emotion. Only when a white person gets hurt does the movie show a little enthusiasm to seek justice. Only that character is assigned any meaningful importance. And besides the black women singing at the end, who we don't know, the resolve of the movie is about Hackman and the woman talking. Is this a movie about blacks or women? Women's rights are important, but considering the context of the film I just thought it didn't celebrate justice for black people enough. If it wasn't for the excessive racist talk and violence toward blacks you'd forget this is a film about civil rights.

What it reminded me of is a bad slasher movie. We know who the killers are right away and after that we just follow the detectives and listen to people be racist. With all the violence thrown in it's like a slasher movie where you know the killer right away and the rest of the movie is just uncreative and disgusting death scenes that grow on your nerves. Or like watching Faces of Death. What puts me off is how the movie doesn't pick a side. It's just telling the story. There's no emotion in the movie. Hackman gets mad when the woman is beat up. Dafoe is like an android. The only real emotion in the film is the rednecks anger towards blacks which just hangs in the air, meaningless and offensive, and the emotion you yourself put into it. The shocking hate crimes didn't make me emotional, it just made me disgusted. The movie was like watching a real video of whites beating up blacks. I wouldn't give a video like that 5 stars.

I know this is based on a true story. My review is entirely about my experience with the movie and my criticism of the characterizations. As a movie it didn't work for me. Look at movies about WWII like Schindler's List and The Pianist. That's what this movie should have been like. The content of the story just isn't big enough to support the importance of the subject matter.

The second half of the film was better, but not by much. It's ruined by the first half, anyway. The only thing I liked about it the beginning with the three men getting killed. A very tense moment. At the beginning of a movie you don't expect flushed out characters so it works there. And the car chase scene was done well. The rednecks were driving away with a black man they were going to beat up, but Dafoe says not to follow until the cop goes back inside. That scene was good because you were thinking "hurry up and go!!!" The movie so reminded me of a horror movie I expected the car not to start.