GHOSTS OF MISSISSIPPI
A film review by Scott Renshaw
Copyright 1996 Scott Renshaw
(Columbia/Castle Rock) Starring: Alec Baldwin, Whoopi Goldberg, James Woods, Craig T. Nelson. Screenplay: Lewis Colick. Producers: Nicholas Palelogos, Andrew Scheinman, Frederick Zollo, Rob Reiner. Director: Rob Reiner. MPAA Rating: R (violence, adult themes, profanity) Running Time: 130 minutes. Reviewed by Scott Renshaw.
It took watching A TIME TO KILL for the second time in less than a year for me to realize that I had been too easy on it the first time around. Actually, it wasn't A TIME TO KILL I saw the second time -- it was GHOSTS OF MISSISSIPPI -- but that's merely a technicality. One film per year about a white Mississippi lawyer struggling to Do the Right Thing in the face of familial protest, racist threats and an intransigent justice system should be the legal limit, and the second such film is bound to feel like the end of a marathon session of multi-cultural sensitivity training. The premise is simplistic and obvious, but at least A TIME TO KILL featured some strong performances. GHOSTS OF MISSISSIPPI is a plodding, ridiculously earnest film in which any potential drama gets water-logged in a big puddle of white liberal guilt.
The fact-based GHOSTS OF MISSISSIPPI opens in 1963, with the murder of civil rights leader Medgar Evers (James Pickens Jr.) by white supremacist Byron De La Beckwith (James Woods). Though the evidence against Beckwith is strong, the presence of more than a few similarly minded witnesses and jurors results in two hung juries in 1964. Fast-forward to 1989, where assistant D.A. Bobby DeLaughter (Alec Baldwin) finds the Evers case brought to public attention again by Evers' widow Myrlie (Whoopi Goldberg) and a newspaper article about jury tampering in the 1964 trials. Bobby begins to re-open the case against Beckwith, but finds little which promises any success: evidence has disappeared, witnesses have died, and plenty of people feel the past is best left undisturbed. But the case becomes a personal quest for Bobby, who finally brings Beckwith to trial again in 1994 only to discover that his mission of healing still has a long way to go.
The first images in GHOSTS OF MISSISSIPPI are icons of the fight for racial equity -- segregated drinking fountains, Jackie Robinson, Martin Luther King -- underlined by Marc Shaiman's spiritual-influenced score, and you need no further information to figure out where Rob Reiner plans to take the story. This is a film which wants you to leave with the message "Racism is bad" tattooed across your backbrain, and I suppose you'd have to say that it succeeds. Unfortunately, Reiner and writer Lewis Colick spoon-feed that message to the audience like it was cough syrup; they are so concerned with making GHOSTS OF MISSISSIPPI good for you that they don't take the time to make it good.
Many of the same problems were evident in A TIME TO KILL, along with more than a few of the same specific plot details. The hero's wife admonishes him for his irresponsibility, anonymous racists vandalize his property, and a threat to his family merely serves to stiffen his resolve -- all familiar elements in serious-minded social dramas. At lest A TIME TO KILL had the benefit of some strong performances to give the stock scenarios some spark, though. Alec Baldwin plays Bobby DeLaughter as an inscrutable portrait in solemn determination, tempered with patient parenting; Whoopi Goldberg plays Myrlie Evers as an inscrutable portrait in solemn determination, tempered with dignified grief. As rabble-rousing as A TIME TO KILL managed to be at times, at least there appeared to be a few characters in it who were passionate about the incendiary issues involved. William H. Macy, on hand for comic relief as Bobby's nervous investigator, often seems to be the only person in GHOSTS OF MISSISSIPPI with a pulse.
You might expect some energy from James Woods as the unrepentant bigot, and to a certain extent you get it. Smothered in old age make-up, Woods works up a thespian sweat to make Beckwith an easy-to-hate villain. His arrogance that no one would possibly convict a white man for killing a black man is the only genuine emotion in GHOSTS OF MISSISSIPPI, but he obscures it with mannerisms: pursed lips, sniffs of disdain, bits of background business. There is such an obvious build-up toward a big courtroom confrontation between Beckwith and Bobby that you can almost hear Rob Reiner in the background coaching Woods on his "You can't handle the truth" speech, yet that moment never comes. And I found myself missing it, as melodramatic and historically inaccurate as it might have been, because at least it would have given GHOSTS OF MISSISSIPPI a fire to match its sincerity. I'm sure everyone involved felt they had made an important film, and in one sense they have: it is important to remember that even sentiments this honorable needs to have an interesting story to tell. This MISSISSIPPI isn't burning...it's boring.
On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 Ole Misses: 3.
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