In the Heat of the Night

This is a prime example of a movie being carried by amazing acting and a razor-sharp atmosphere. Let's get the flaws out of the way: the mystery in this movie is not well put-together, and the conclusion is rushed to all hell. It's like, with 20 minutes left, the movie suddenly woke up and realized it had to actually start making dots connect and grabbed a pencil, even if the picture didn't quite make sense. And what little score there is, while energetic, doesn't always fit the scene; there's a part where a suspect is making an on-foot escape across a bridge, and the score (over 20 minutes in, and it's the first instance of a score!) has this distracting bass drum noise that sounds like a comical BOING, but in that bass drum lower register. My wife described it as "what a drum would sound like if it could make a slide whistle noise". It sounds like a sound effect you'd hear of a cartoon car hitting an awning after falling off a roof, not the rhythm track to a serious police chase of a murder suspect. Okay, complaints out of the way. YOU GUYS THE ACTING IN THIS IS LEGIT. I mean, I don't need to tell you that Sidney Poitier and Rod Steiger are great actors, but YO, MAN, THEY ARE GREAT ACTORS. Watching these two heavyweights square off against each other in a contest of wills and prejudices is a master-class in acting. Steiger's small town southern police chief is loathsome for his not even half-hearted attempt to hide his racism, and his desire to quickly wrap up the murder case that drives this movie, even if the answer is wrong to the point of comedically stupid. But Steiger also manages to imbue a sadness to him; comments made by other characters reveal he wasn't a dream candidate for the position of chief, his subordinates don't respect him or do anything he says, and at one point, even citizens of the town mock his authority. He's a man with very little in his life but his job and his prejudices and it's left him lonely and old. Conversely, Poitier's Tibbs is an educated, prideful man. He does not suffer fools, and in Sparta, he is in a sea of them. He is resentful that he is put in a position where he has to help people who are not afraid to show their prejudices of him. Over the course of the movie, that resentment turns into obstinance, and finally exposes his own prejudices. The movie doesn't make him a bad guy for feeling this way, nor does it justify it because of his surroundings. It simply presents the man as a human being, flawed, like everybody else. Tibbs, at least, has the common sense to recognize it and call himself out for it, which is more than can be said for the white people in the movie. The closest the movie gets to humanizing the chief is the final scene, where he and Tibbs exchange a terse handshake, and the chief ends up smiling just a bit. It's enough to say that he's grown to respect Tibbs, even if he still holds his prejudices. The directing, too, has to be commended, for creating a small southern town in the middle of the Civil Rights Movement, that feels exactly like what it would be: racist to a fault. There is no shying away from that here, and the racist locals are portrayed as scum. Almost literally, as many of them are visually dirty and slimy, or otherwise cast as trashy and low-class. Tibbs is the lone beacon of intelligence and civility here. This would be a bold movie for 2022. For 1967, it's amazing this ever got made. Bottom line, you can't go wrong seeing it. The mystery may not be as well-crafted as other movies, but you will be swallowed whole by the acting on display here. This is a heavyweight prize fight that goes the distance, but in the best possible way.