Review of In the Heat of the Night

It's very interesting to think about how films age. Viewed from modern eyes, In the Heat of the Night is nothing special. To many, the primitive methods used by police to solve a murder mystery are cliched from countless detective stories produced since, and are pretty obsolete when compared to the high-tech and far-fetched ways in which murders are solved on CSI. The moralizing around racism in Mississippi is old news: we're modern people and most of us agree that violent lynchings are bad.



However, this was not the case in 1967. Then, America was in the midst of a raging civil rights battle. Songs like "Nigger Hatin' Me" received radio play. To many people, the idea of a black man slapping a white man was truly shocking. It happens in this movie, and it was apparently one of the first times something like that had happened on the big screen. As for the policing, I can imagine the forensic work was, at the time, considered to be quite clever and cutting edge.

But now, it's not. It's all been done countless times and developed in new ways since. While this movie may have done it first, but it's hard not to see it as cliche. During the screening, I told myself repeatedly that it wasn't cliche, it was iconic, but it didn't work. In short, it didn't age very well.

This is not to say I didn't enjoy it on some level. It had some great dialogue, including the very powerful and famous line, "They call me MISTER Tibbs!", which went on to become the title of a sequel. Sidney Poitier was a powerful screen presence. Taken together, all of these things added up to a solid "meh".

2 1/2 drunken rednecks out of 5