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Mississippi Burning

Directed by  Alan Parker

Produced by  Robert J. Colesberry

Written by  Chris Gerolmo

Starring  Gene Hackman

Willem Dafoe

Frances McDormand

Music by  Trevor Jones

Distributed by  Orion Pictures

Release date(s)  December 9, 1988

Running time  128 min.

Language  English

Mississippi Burning is a 1988 film based on the investigation into the real-life murders of three civil rights workers in Mississippi in 1964. The movie focuses on two fictional FBI agents (portrayed by Gene Hackman and Willem Dafoe) who investigate the murders. Gene Hackman's character is loosely based on the actions of FBI Agent John Proctor. Dafoe's character is very loosely based on FBI agent Joseph Sullivan.

The film also stars Frances McDormand, Brad Dourif, R. Lee Ermey and Gailard Sartain, and was written by Chris Gerolmo and directed by Alan Parker. It won the Academy Award for Best Cinematography, and was nominated for Best Actor in a Leading Role (Hackman), Best Actress in a Supporting Role (McDormand), Best Director, Best Film Editing, Best Picture and Best Sound.

The film has been criticized by many, including historian Howard Zinn, for its fictionalization of history. While FBI agents are presented as heroes who descend upon the town by the hundreds, in reality the FBI and the Justice Department only reluctantly protected civil rights workers and protesters and reportedly witnessed beatings without intervening.[1]

Mississippi Burning was preceded in 1975 by a television docudrama titled Attack on Terror: The FBI vs. the Ku Klux Klan, depicting many of the same events. None of the movies used the real names of the murderers, due to legal considerations. Mississippi Burning never even mentions the names of the victims. They are referred to as "The Boys". The film presents the policeman's wife as the informant. The identity of the real informant - known as "Mr. X." was a closely held secret for 40 years. In the process of reopening the case, journalist Jerry Mitchell and teacher Barry Bradford uncovered his real name.[2]

While the film produced an Academy award and several nominations, critics noted that blacks were portrayed in the film merely as victims who must rely on white heroes from the FBI to bring any of the criminals to justice. They point out that in a story in which black people and their struggle against injustice are paramount, there is no significant black character to represent the courage of African Americans of this period. (The character of Agent Monk, the black FBI agent who kidnaps and intimidates the mayor, was entirely ficticious; the only blacks employed by the Bureau during J. Edgar Hoover's tenure as head, were his chauffeurs.)

The opening scenes to Mississippi Burning were some of the most harrowing ever seen in any film of the 1980s. An Apostolic church was the first building seen in the film, ablaze with the Ku Klux Klan calling card - a wooden cross - within a fierce inferno. The murder in the next scenes ended with the local county sheriff patrol car pursuing a saloon car (sedan) along a dirt road, where the deputy forced the driver to stop. The white Jewish driver of the car was subjected to a string of derogatory insults including "nigger lover" and "Jew boy" (in reference to his Afro-Caribbean passenger) those two were shot dead along with their other white social worker.

Ku Klux Klan (KKK) is the name of organizations in the United States that have advocated white supremacy, racism, anti-Semitism, anti-Catholicism, homophobia, anti-Communism and nativism. These organizations have used terrorism, violence, and acts of intimidation, such as cross burning and lynching, to oppress African Americans and other social or ethnic groups

Buddy cop film

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The "buddy cop" subgenre of buddy films are actions films with plots involving two men of very different and conflicting personalities who are forced to work together to solve a crime and/or defeat criminals, sometimes learning from each other in the process. The two men are normally cops, but some films, such as 48 Hrs. (cop and an ex-con), that are not about two cops may still be referred to as a buddy cop film, or as a member of a larger genre known as buddy films.[citation needed]

Frequently, although not always, the two heroes are of different ethnicities or cultures. However, regardless of ethnicity, the central difference is normally that one is "wilder" than the other: a hot-tempered iconoclast is paired with a more even-tempered partner. Often the "wilder" partner is the younger of the two, with the even-tempered partner having more patience and experience. These films sometimes also contain a variation on the good cop/bad cop motif, in which one partner is kinder and law-abiding, while the other is a streetwise, "old school" police officer who tends to break (or at least bend) the rules. Another frequent plot device of this genre is for one of the men be removed from his natural element, usually by being forced to operate in a different country. When this is done, the other man acts as a guide to the unfamiliar.

In his review of Rush Hour, Roger Ebert coined the term "Wunza Movie" to describe this subgenre, a pun on the phrase "One's a..." that could be used to describe the contrasts between the two characters in a typical film.[1]

The cliche was satirized in the film Last Action Hero. In the Movie City police department, all cops are obligatory assigned a conflicting buddy to work with.

A subgenre of the buddy cop film is the buddy cop-dog movie, which teams a cop with a dog, but uses the same element of unlikely partnership to create comedic hijinks. Examples include Turner and Hooch and K-9.

[edit] Origins

Early pioneers to the buddy film/buddy cop genre include the TV series I Spy and Starsky and Hutch, and to a lesser extent, Miami Vice.

Freebie and the Bean was one of the earliest films of the genre, while the 1982 film 48 Hrs., starring Eddie Murphy and Nick Nolte, is one of the most successful.

Examples of notable Buddy Cop films are:

   * Freebie and the Bean (1974)

   * 48 Hrs. (1982)

   * Alien Nation (human teamed with extraterrestrial)

   * Along Came a Spider

   * Bad Boys and Bad Boys II (playboy teamed with family man)

   * Beverly Hills Cop and its sequels (an unorthodox, street-smart cop teams with by-the-book cops)

   * Black Rain

   * Blue Streak

   * Bon Cop, Bad Cop (French Canadian and English Canadian cops)

   * Colors

   * Die Hard with a Vengeance (Caucasian cop paired with African-American racist electrician)

   * Dragnet (the 1987 film starring Dan Aykroyd and Tom Hanks)

   * Hawaii Vice (genre parodying series of pornographic films pairing an Asian woman with a Caucasian male)

   * Hollywood Homicide

   * Hot Fuzz (genre parody and buddy cop movie by Edgar Wright, starring Simon Pegg and Nick Frost)

   * The Lethal Weapon series (African-American family man teamed with Caucasian maverick)

   * Metro

   * Red Heat (Russian cop teamed with American)

   * Rising Sun

   * Running Scared

   * Showdown in Little Tokyo (1991)

   * Rush Hour, Rush Hour 2, and Rush Hour 3 (Chinese cop teamed with African-American cop)

   * Se7en (cop approaching retirement teamed with young hothead)

   * Showtime

   * Starsky & Hutch (streetwise intuitive cop teamed with reserved, intellectual cop)

   * Tango & Cash (smooth cop teamed with scruffy cop)

   * National Security

   * Bullet Proof

   * The Rundown (not cops, but same idea)