Review, Example 1

FIRE IN THE HEART OF A SOUTHERN STATE

■™WT5b4 i niitt young men, two white and one black, were driving around Mississippi trying s to persuade local black people to vote. One night they disappeared. The case caused a sensation andtheAttorneyGeneral, io Robert Kennedy, forced the head of the FBI, J.

Edgar Hoover, to send a team of officers down south.

be brought to justice.

Alan Parker is far morę interested in images than words and 'Mississippi Burning' sis an extraordinary visual experience. His version of the South is a strange, hellish world of fire, decay and darkness, and the evil of racism is conveyed, perhaps too crudely, by the fleshy ugliness of the actors oand extras he has chosen to play the white Southerners.

The film has been intensely controversial in America. Parker has represented the Mississippi Blacks as entirely passive svictims who can only be saved by white men from the north. He has also created his own version of the FBI investigation, turning it into standard cop drama. Fortunately, Parker has the services of Gene Hackman. o in my view the finestscreen actor in America, who conveys so much dignity and pain in the face of wickedness that he virtually saves the film single-handedly. 'Mississippi Burning' will cause bitter disagreement, but sit will grip virtually everyone who sees it.

u After six weeks of investigation and a little bribery, they found the bodies and discovered the truth. The young men had been arrested by Mississippi police,

: oohanded over to a local branch of the Ku Klux Klan and murdered.

The film is directed by Alan Parker. What clearly fascinated him about the story of 'Mississippi Burning' was that it concerned u a strange, dark, uncivilised state in modern America. At the beginning of the film, two FBI agents. Anderson and Ward, are driving south to investigate the disappearance.

Anderson poses a riddle: What has four i joeyes but cannot see? The answer is Mississippi.

Ward is determined to conduct his investigation by the book. Anderson is a Southerner and understands that normal is procedurę does not apply down there. The Whites are silent and the Blacks scared to talk. Ward's attempts at interrogation continually run up against a brick wali' while Anderson slyly wins the confidence óf local u Whites. Gradually he convinces Ward that only by breaking the rules can the culprits

Format The model, review contains four basie sieps-

a)    Recommendation

b)    Plot

c)    General comments

d)    introduction/Background to the story