Ghosts of Mississippi (1996)

Surprisingly incoherent and boring

Sadly Over-hyped

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

This is a superb film.First of all, it appears to me that this is a reasonably good telling of the real story. Although, it may surprise people to know that the prosecutor played by Alec Baldwin later ended up in prison himself when he became a disgraced judge himself (you can read about it in Wikipedia).But aside from the telling of the story, what impressed me about this film was the quality of the acting, particularly for a couple of people about whom we may have forgotten just how good actors they were.Alec Baldwin is superb as prosecutor Bobby DeLaughter. In fact, I wonder if this may not have been his finest film performance.Whoopi Goldberg is equally excellent (and restrained) as Myrlie Evers, the widow of Medgar Evers.And James Woods, though he plays the villain here, is excellently disgusting as Byron De La Beckwith, the convicted assassin of Medgar Evers.To be honest, it's difficult for me to find fault with this film. It's very solid.

with pretty good choice of cast. I especially noted some the dialog in this film that I deemed to be very meaningfully deep enough and quite worth quoting here in this review:"Well, heck, son, what did you expect?""I expect people to act like decent, law-abiding citizens. That's what I expect. This is 1990, for crying out loud.""Of course it is. And we got blacks and whites playing ball together, and on the police force, in the government, on TV. We are a fully evolved society. Aren't we, son? Hmm? Let me tell you something—this country may be legally integrated, but emotionally, we will always be segregated.""I don't know that I accept that." ……"Doesn't matter how many civil rights laws you pass, you'll never legislate how people think.""May your soul rise up to heaven 'fore the devil knows you're dead.""When you hate, the only person who suffers is YOU. Because most of the people you hate don't know it and the others don't care."~UnquoteAmerican history by any standard to look at is just a dirty laundry, yet is so foolishly boasted by lot of American citizens. Let's not forget those people who introduced the slavery into America were all white people who called themselves Christians, a God-loving race, yet they considered themselves superior to all other races with different colors. The independent war fought against the British Empire was actually whites against whites, Christians against Christian, for entitlements and privileges. The sublime words such as "Freedom" and "Liberty" were only used to justify the betrayal, rebellion against a ruling government, a separatism that simply for the purpose to cut off the authoritative governing by their ruling British government. The actions they did for independence, today is called insurgency and would be dealt with maximum military force to suppress with extreme prejudice. Then came the so-called "Civil War", the most shameful yet another similar whites against whites, Christians against Christians, American citizens against American citizens. But this time, these God-loving Christian white people, used the excuse of the "Negro/Black/N-gr" for their fighting and killings. One side used "Free the black slaves" to fight against their opponents who opposed it. Yet in fact, it's just another entitlement and profit fights among these white people. The most laughable and disgraceful piece of the American history was the "Civil Rights Movement", that totally ridiculed the "Civil War" outcome. It only exposed that Black Americans were never freed after the Civil War, after millions of white Christian Americans were killed in that stupid war.This based-on-true-murder-case film also shows that down in the south, so many states, and so many white Americans still considered themselves so superior to their black fellow citizens, even lot of the whites are white trash or tailor park lowlifes. Because"This country may be legally integrated, but emotionally, we will always be segregated." and "Doesn't matter how many civil rights laws you passed, you'll never legislate how people think."But by all means, the Hollywood movie industries are trying so hard to preach the "Melting Pot" idea to shoo the whites to accept the beauty or even the superiority of their black citizens. The inter-racial romances are so highly encouraged to result nowadays' trendy inter-racial marriages between whites and blacks, making their next generation never need to use the Sun to tan their skins. And regretfully we also found out, after so many and so much brain-wash propaganda, we still unfortunately got Rodney King's unjust verdict riot, so many white cops still killed their black citizens in so many cities today. It only pathetically further proves what the script of this film said:"We are a fully evolved society. Aren't we, son? Hmm? Let me tell you something—this country may be legally integrated, but emotionally, we will always be segregated."Amen.

Ghosts of Mississippi tells the story of the assassination of civil rights leader Medgar Evers by Klansman Byron de la Beckwith, and the much-delayed trial of the assassin. Alec Baldwin plays the Prosecutor determined to bring De la Beckwith to justice, and does a serviceable job as does Whoopi Goldberg as Evers' widow. James Woods gives an at-times over-the-top performance as the killer. Unfortunately the story gets bogged down in stories about the Prosecutor's home life, and the decision to bring in Southern Poverty Law Center leader Morris Dees, who completely hams up his time in the film. This is a film that fails it's subject. By trying to make the subject matter less complex and less scary the filmmakers ruined what could have been a very powerful and moving film. It does have a good soundtrack, though, so there's that.

THIS FILM IS BASED ON A TRUE STORY. Not only was the real Myrlie Evers consulted while making the film, two of her and Medgar's sons were actually in the film, playing themselves. Benny Bennett also played himself.It was based on a actual (although little known) event in American history, and shows how there are still conflicts over civil rights today. We also learn that there are still some people in the Southern U.S. that are opposed to laws that have been in place for over 35 years.So while watching this you shouldn't think "the story is cliche" or "the acting was good, but predictable," you should be thinking that this actually happened, and reflecting on how far we've come as a society, and how far we still need to go.