Two FBI agents investigating the murder of civil rights workers during the 60s seek to breach the conspiracy of silence in a small Southern town where segregation divides black and white. The younger agent trained in FBI school runs up against the small town ways of his partner, a former sheriff.
Acting
Hackman simmers; Dafoe's restraint makes their clash electric.
Direction
Parker makes humidity and hatred equally suffocating.
Cinematography
Mississippi never looked more beautiful or menacing.
Director
Alan Parker
Gene Hackman
Agent Rupert Anderson
Willem Dafoe
Agent Alan Ward
Frances McDormand
Mrs. Pell
Brad Dourif
Deputy Clinton Pell
R. Lee Ermey
Mayor Tilman
Gailard Sartain
Sheriff Stuckey
Stephen Tobolowsky
Townley
Michael Rooker
Frank Bailey
Pruitt Taylor Vince
Lester Cowens
Badja Djola
Agent Monk
Kevin Dunn
Agent Bird
Frankie Faison
Eulogist
Geoffrey Nauffts
Goatee
Rick Zieff
Passenger
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Based on the 1964 Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner murders—though the real case took years, not days, and local Black activists did the actual investigative work the film gives to FBI heroes.
Gene Hackman based his character partly on his own father, a newspaper reporter who faced down the Klan in 1930s Mississippi. That family fury? Completely real.
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