In the Heat of the Night (DVD, 2001)
Excellent portrayal of the realistic day to day way of life in small town U.S.A. In this movie, the murder of an "important" person is the catalyst for the extreme handling of this case. The dead man was a wealthy industrialist from Chicago, in Sparta, Mississippi, to build a factory. That factory would have provided employment for more than 1000 local workers, white and black. In primarily uneducated, racially polarized, small communities like Sparta, this could be just the thing needed to break the feudal bonds of the "Company store", or as in the case of Sparta, the cotton gin. Such a factory could bring in lots of payroll dollars and totally revitalize the community. In this type of place, there usually is at least one or two major wealthy families who control practically all business, because they control almost all of the money, the police, and the local government. This is still true all over the fabric of America. As it so happened, in the heat of this night, a Philadelphia police detective (Sidney Poitier) is waiting to board a train home. Following the discovery of the dead industrialist, a police officer (Warren Oats) finds Poitier in the train station and immediately assumes that he is the killer. He's black, and not from here, so it must be him! Arrested and taken to jail, Poitier is interviewed by the police chief, Rod Steiger, who gives a true to life and ultimately believable performance of an early 1960's small time, small town Police Chief. Police in communities like these are people to be feared, by all people, both white and black - but much more so if you are black, in 196o. Life was much different if you were in some way "connected" to the rich or "BOSS" family in the area, - and there is always one or more. When Chief Gillespe (Striger) finds out that Virgil Tibbs (Poitier) is a big-time homicide expert, he enlists his help to help solve the case. The solution to this murder is full of twists and turns, and turns out to be nothing more than a robbery gone bad, although the reason was something totally different. This film is a character study of human prejudice, and the petty battles for power and wealth in nowhere, America. These kinds of places still dot the maps of every state. The choice of Mississippi for this story"s location is in itself somewhat prejudice, because this same scenario could have been equally true in Ohio, Kansas, or even Mississippi. This is an enjoyable movie, and I think that I will watch it again tonight.Read full review
