Mississippi Burning is a American crime thriller film directed by Alan Parker and written by Chris Gerolmo that is loosely based on the murder investigation of Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner in Mississippi. It stars Gene Hackman and Willem Dafoe as two FBI agents investigating the disappearance of three civil rights workers in fictional Jessup County, Mississippi, who are met with hostility by the town's residents, local police, and the Ku Klux Klan.
Gerolmo began writing the script in after researching the murders of James Chaney , Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner. He and producer Frederick Zollo presented it to Orion Pictures , and the studio hired Parker to direct. The writer and director had disputes over the script, and Orion allowed Parker to make uncredited rewrites. The film was shot in a number of locations in Mississippi and Alabama , with principal photography from March to May On release, Mississippi Burning was criticized by activists involved in the civil rights movement and the families of Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner for its fictionalization of events.
Critical reaction was generally positive, with praise aimed towards the cinematography and the performances of Hackman, Dafoe and Frances McDormand. In , three civil rights workers β two Jewish and one black β go missing while they are in fictional Jessup County, Mississippi the actual events took place in Neshoba County , organizing a voter registry for African Americans.
Ward is a Northerner, senior in rank but much younger than Anderson, and approaches the investigation by the book. In contrast, Anderson, a former Mississippi sheriff, is more nuanced in his approach. The pair find it difficult to conduct interviews with the local townspeople, as Sheriff Ray Stuckey and his deputies influence the public and are linked to a branch of the Ku Klux Klan. With the help of the son of a local pastor, the FBI is finally able to bring forward a witness who saw Klansmen firebomb a house, and three white men are arrested and tried for felony arson.
A local judge, however, gives the men a token suspended sentence while deriding the FBI as "outside agitators" who provoked the men to violence. He then releases the men, who promptly hang the witness' father and attempt to kill the witness. The FBI evacuate the family to the north and realize they will receive no help at all from local authorities. Meanwhile, Anderson has developed a close relationship with the wife of Deputy Sheriff Clinton Pell who, in a tearful confession, reveals to Anderson that the three missing men have been murdered by her husband and his Klansmen accomplices, who then buried the bodies in an earthen dam.
