1. Mississippi Burning (1988)
Two FBI agents are sent down South to investigate the murders of three civil rights activists. One - Agent Alan Ward (Willem Defoe) is a liberal Northerner who is very direct about the case. The other - Agent Rupert Anderson (Gene Hackman) knows the ins and outs of racial politics in the South and takes a more subtle approach. Both are prevented in working with the black community as the local sheriff's office is in cahoots with a major branch of the Ku Klux Klan. Relations between the sheriff's office and the FBI agents deteriorate after the bodies are found and Anderson and Ward have a fight. But they resolve to stick together after ironing out their differences. The FBI launch a clever program to bust open the ranks of the KKK including: getting a black man with a hood threatening to castrate the Mayor to extract information, holding fake KKK meetings and honing in on Lester Cowens who looks shifty, dropping Cowens in a black neighbourhood to 'think', threatening the deputy mayor with a razor. For the finale, Lester arrive home to find a burning cross on his lawn and a group of KKK men in full regalia. Crapping himself he confesses all to the FBI. Ironically, it was FBI men dressed as KKK men who frightened him into confessing. Due to Lester's confession, most of the people involved are successfully convicted of the murders. Mississippi Burning angered some people for its fictionalisation of historical incident, but what it really does is mix fiction and fact to make a gripping Hollywood film. Both Defoe and Hackman in particular are excellent in their roles. Whether or not you think it is a good film, it will produce a strong reaction in you about the subject of racism and man's inhumanity to man. You get the sense of people being baptised into racism and how it is a way of life for some. But to join the KKK speaks of pure evilness.