GHOSTS OF MISSISSIPPI
A film review by Michael John Legeros
Copyright 1997 Michael John Legeros
(Columbia)
Directed by Rob Reiner
Written by Lewis Collick
Cast Alec Baldwin, Whoopi Goldberg, James Woods, Craig T.
Nelson, Diane Ladd, Bonnie Bartlet, Bill Cobbs, William
H. Macy, Virginia Madsen, Michael O'Keefe, Susannah
Thompson
MPAA Rating "R" (presumably for language and violence)
Running Time 130 minutes
Reviewed at General Cinemas at Pleasant Valley, Raleigh, NC
(03JAN96)
==
The second stinker and potential career-sinker for Rob Reiner (remember NORTH?) is an odd one. Here's an earnest, star-studded docudrama about slain Sixties civil rights activist Medgar Evers that all but ignores him! Well, to be fair, GHOSTS OF MISSISSIPPI is really about the decades-later retrial of Evers' assassin, white supremacist Byron De La Beckwith, played here by a cackling James Woods in old-age make-up. (Calm down. Though a scene-stealer-- and arguably the only character who comes to life in this dreadful feature-- Beckwith is on-screen for all of twenty minutes. Maybe thirty.) At the center of the story, instead, is Alec Baldwin's character, an Assistant D.A. who spends years rebuilding the case against Beckwith and at the cost of his marriage, reputation, and personal safety. Yawn. While it's always a treat to see the one- time Jack Ryan front *any* film, his liberal- white-legal-guy-with-guilt has been done before, and better, and most recently by Mr. McConaughey in A TIME TO KILL. You've already seen this movie, so why bother?
Grade: D+
--
Mike Legeros - Raleigh, NC, USA, Earth legeros@pagesz.net (h) - legeros@unx.sas.com (w) I'm also on the Web! http://www.pagesz.net/~legeros/
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