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starring: Sidney Poitier, Rod Steiger, Warren Oates, Lee Grant directed by: Norman Jewison

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Customer Reviews
Average Rating: Rating: - Two Great Actors in a Great Movie Sidney Poitier and Rod Steiger almost set the screen afire in this film that deservedly won the Academy Award for Best Picture in 1967. Superbly directed by Norman Jewison, the movie brings us into deepest Mississippi one summer midnight, when a northern industrialist with plans to build a new factory is found murdered in the middle of Sparta's main street. At the same time, Virgil Tibbs, a black detective from Los Angeles, is waiting at the station for the train that will take him back home from visiting his mother. This being Mississippi, and a black man out after dark, it must have been the black man who committed the murder, right? Tibbs is hauled into the sheriff's office and brought face to face with Bill Gillespie, the epitome of every redneck law officer south of the Mason-Dixon Line. Gillespie's reaction to Tibbs is first contempt (this is a black man after all), suspicion at his full wallet ("Boy, that's more in a week than I make in a month, now where did you earn that?"), and finally shock, when Tibbs hurls the response into his face, "I'm a police officer." Gillespie is further stunned to realize that Tibbs' contempt for him is at least as great as his for Tibbs, when he hears Tibbs telling his superiors over the phone "They got a murder on their hands, they don't know what to do with it." Tibbs' boss volunteers Tibbs's services as a homicide expert to Gillespie, who doesn't particularly want to accept, but he doesn't have much of a choice; the industrialist's widow says if her husband's murder isn't solved and fast, there won't be any factory anywhere. The resulting reluctant partnership between the two men is a pairing unlike any seen on screen; they resent each other but they can't solve the crime without each other; Gillespie needs Tibbs' expertise, and Tibbs needs Gillespie's protection from the local rednecks who want him dead. The movie wonderfully evokes the atmosphere of a small town in the deep south, the abject poverty in which most of the blacks in the area lived, and the attitudes of the whites in town that made it dangerous for any black man to stand tall as a man. At the movie's end, Gillespie hasn't changed his views about blacks, but he has come to respect Tibbs as a lawman and as a human being; and Tibbs comes to realize that inside of Gillespie's hardshell racist attitudes is a decent man struggling to show himself. The acting, the directing, and above all, Quincy Jones's magnificent score, made this one of the best movies of the 1960's and for years beyond. Rating: - Cast, storytelling turns on Heat "In the Heat of the Night" excels not only because of the story but also because of a composite cast that works so well. The acting is sometimes over the top (as the director admits during the DVD commentary), but such shenanigans fit in this type of film. Multiple viewings help in the understanding of how detective Virgil Tibbs (Sidney Poitier) unravels the mystery of who killed the rich Northerner in a Southern town. Though somewhat dated because of the racist subject, it still holds together as a who-done-it and deserved better recognition from the American Film Institute when that group named its 100 best films of the century. Among that Top 100 was another 1967 Poitier film, "Guess Who's Coming To Dinner," which does not hold up well today. And for the record, Poitier was likely overlooked by the Academy Awards here because he starred in three box office bonanzas in '67, the third being "To Sir With Love." Instead, the Oscar went to 'Heat of the Night' co-star Rod Steiger. As for the DVD, there are some visible scratches in the film, and there is only a commentary track with no other extras. A "making of" documentary would have been nice, but the four-person commentary (director Norman Jewison, cinematographer Haskell Wexler and actors Lee Grant and Steiger) serves well. This one is worth owning for the low price attached, although the video transfer and packaging could have been handled with more repect. It deserves it. Rating: - A great movie you can watch again and again All the classic elements, and some touchy subjects, (black and white relations in a small southern town) but acting from Rod Steiger and Sidney Poitier make anything else irrelevent. Get your popcorn and drink, sit back, unhook the phone, and savor this tremendous film. And not to worry, you'll feel real good when it's over.

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