well and i guess this be why movie be so personal to the viewer . i have read some of the other comment here and have see word like condescend and mediocre . i couldn not disagree more . mississippi burning be an intellectually challenging movie . it demand that you immerse yourself in the bad of southern culture and whether you like it or not . base on a true story and the film take place in 1964 ( my birth year and incidentally ) in a small town ugly and virulent with racism . the good ol boy sheriff and his stoolie ambush and in cold blood murder three civil right worker . the world a changing and but the power broker in this place refuse to let that happen . they will do anything to prevent black from take their rightful place at the table literally . the fbi send a couple of mismatched agent in to search for the three miss young men . one agent ( hackman ) be old school and sly and and know his enemy a little too well . the other ( dafoe ) be a naive kennedy fire eater and ready to bring the full force of the fbi and military down upon this small town head . although he be easy to underestimate at first and he grow into his role and show astonish decisiveness and strength . the relationship between the town black and white be complicate and fraught with rule speak and unspoken . it a not so secret secret that the civil right worker have be murder . hackman and dafoe just have to get the body and the evidence and that all . fear and loathe prevent that from happen and until the wife of a deputy ( the amazing france mcdormand ) throw herself on the fire and blow her slimy husband alibi . there be justice of a sort in the end . it not enough . real change crawl on it belly in the south . mississippi burning be a movie of operatic gesture . the script be spongey with regional color and snappy and powerful dialogue . hackman and mcdormand be simply magical . they do not take or make a false step from the first frame to the last . a she would go on to prove in late film and mcdormand doesn not just play a character she be that character . and hackman be never more affecting that in this film . one syllable from him be more subtle than an entire shakespeare speech when deliver by a less actor . hackman be a national treasure . imo and dafoe be a well mean revelation until circumstance force him to cave into hackman just get it do way . he come to see that idealism must relent to pragmatism in extreme case and although that knowledge repulse him . he want nothing more than to get out of the south and go home to a world he believe be clean and more simple . the conclusion of mississippi be more bitter than sweet . the guilty be arrest and convict and although their various punishment be a joke . ( r. lee ermey be the only one in the bunch who meet a just fate . ) mcdormand be brutally beat to within an inch of her life for betray the status quo and do the right thing . although she and hackman have fall in love and she refuse to leave with him because this gesturing to the vandalized ruin of the house she be bear in be my home . i know the history and and i know this movie inside and out . and yet i still bawl like a baby every time i see it . the power of this film and the fact that mississippi be base on actual event never fail to get to me . mississippi burning have a place in my top 50 drama . .