GHOSTS OF MISSISSIPPI (24)

Directed by: Rob Reiner

Starring: Alec Baldwin, Whoopi Goldberg, James Woods

The Pitch: The 1994 trial of white supremacist Byron de la Beckwith, for the murder of civil rights leader Medgar Evers 31 years earlier.

Theo Sez: So crude you can't even get angry (well, not very) : "this story is true" claims an opening title in this trite tale of saintly victims and oppressive bigots - but surely not the whole story. There's actually three levels of "truth" in a film like this : the purely factual - e.g. that our hero, the assistant DA prosecuting the case, is a member (by marriage) of a staunchly Old South, unabashedly racist family - which probably is accurate (it has that truth-stranger-than-fiction quality) ; the emotional - that he re-examines his life and values as a result of taking on the case - which feels unnaturally glib, and generally fake ; and the Significant, or indicative - that he stops singing "Dixie" to his kids as a result of his conversion - which, even if true, is so atrociously crude and reductive it should never have been allowed onscreen. Unfortunately that's exactly the level the film revels in, featuring, on one side, a time-warped bunch of iced-tea-sipping monsters (Significant Detail : they actually speak of "niggers" in front of a black waiter) and, on the other, Goldberg exuding Quiet Dignity in what has to be the most irritating performance anyone's given in years (her witness-stand testimony, e-nun-ci-a-ting every syllable, is some kind of high-water mark for self-importance : you just want to shake her and yell "Act like a human being!"). Only Woods isn't saddled with "revealing" bits of business - his Beckwith is remote, self-sufficient, unexplained right to the end - and, unsurprisingly, he walks away with the picture, quite chilling and shockingly charismatic. The rest of it is most charitably seen not as a movie but as the movie equivalent of a tribute album, a soggy valentine to the Civil Rights movement. Clearly, everyone involved thought they were making a noble statement in what's undoubtedly a Good Cause - but what did they expect, a medal? And could everyone who was nasty to MISSISSIPPI BURNING now apologise, please?