Racism sucks.
Summary (with spoilers): Poduck town in Bumblefuck, Mississippi. 1967. Deputy Sam Wood is making the rounds in his patrol car; it's late at night. It's also hot out. And Sam is in the heat. At night. Hey, wait a minute...
He passes by the a house where he can look in the window and see a beautiful woman standing naked. Then, it's off the diner to purchase some pie and coffee from the local gomer named Ralph. As soon as that business is taken care of, he nearly runs over a body in the road. He gets out, inspects the dead man, then radios for backup. His superior tells him to search the area, and Sam does so, finding someone at the train station. It's a black man, suspiciously sitting there and reading his paper, so Sam calls him "boy", and handcuffs him, gun drawn. He searches the man's wallet and discovers 200 dollars. That's enough for an arrest.
At the precinct, Sam brings the man into the Chief's office. Chief Gillespie asks the man his name. "Virgil Tibbs". Gillespie asks Sam to step out for a minute, then he softly and confidentially tells Virgil that it's okay, he can confess. Tell me why you killed that man.
Virgil says he killed no one, and that he was simply visiting his mother and now returning home to Philadelphia. Gillespie wants to know how a negro could make so much money. Virgil reveals he is a police officer. Gillespie looks at his wallet and sees a badge. He calls Sam back in, and shows Sam the badge. Sam's eyes widen with fear. "YEAH!" Gillespie hilariously bellows. "A cop!" And after laughing for about twenty seconds, I knew this movie had me.
So, Gillespie calls the Philadelphia station to confirm Virgil is a cop, and when the police chief there speaks to Virgil, he tells him to assist Gillespie on their case. Virgil is confident that Gillespie won't want help, but Gillespie does. He asks Virgil to inspect the body, and when he does, he disagrees with the coroner's findings that the body died in the last couple hours. He speaks to the coroner and deputy in the way that you speak to people you find incredibly stupid, but you have to be unfailingly polite to anyway. Virgil rattles off some theories about the murder, while Gillespie gets a call about a suspect.
He catches a man seen running from the scene, and he has the dead man's wallet in his pocket.
Meanwhile, the dead man's wife, Mrs Colbert, shows up at the precinct and Virgil tells her the news.
Gillespie shows back up with the suspect, Harvey, in cuffs. Virgil asks if he can take a look at him. Gillespie crows that it's fine, but your services are no longer needed. Virgil feels Harvey's arms up and down. He determines that Harvey is left-handed, and therefore couldn't have done it because Mr. Colbert's head wound was made by a right-handed person. (I wish I was left-handed because I would be exonerated if I was ever falsely accused of murder, according to every crime-based TV show and movie). Gillespie has had enough. He tells Virgil to get his ass back to Philly. "Virgil, that's a funny name for a nigger up in Philadelphia, what do they call you up there?"
"They call me Mr. Tibbs!"
Sidney Poitier chews up that line and spits it out, and it's so sweet. Gillespie's disgusted, but lets Mr. Tibbs talk to Harvey for a while, and he learns Harvey has an alibi. They change the charge to theft. In the meantime, Mrs. Colbert insists that Mr. Tibbs stay on the case, as he was the only one who kept an innocent man from being charged. Turns out, Mr. Colbert was from up north, and that he had moved here in order to build a factory that will employ thousands of people. Mrs. Colbert tells Gillespie that the factory won't be made if the murder isn't solved, and Mr. Tibbs must stay on the case.
Gillespie convinces a reluctant Mr. Tibbs to stay in town and help out, partially by telling him he can prove that he's better than all these dumb redneck cops. Mr. Tibbs searches Colbert's car and finds some cotton fabrics. He learns that Eric Endicott is the local plantation owner who was Colbert's enemy. Mr. Tibbs and Gillespie go to the Endicott's cotton plantation, passing by hundreds of black employees who are literally picking cotton, and approach Endicott's giant mansion. Mr. Tibbs questions the elderly, fopish Endicott, who slaps him across the face. Mr. Tibbs slaps him right back. Endicott and Gillespie are stunned, and Endicott wants to know what Gillespie is going to do about it. Gillespie says he doesn't know. They leave the mansion, and Gillespie tells Mr. Tibbs he has to leave that night, or he'll surely be killed. But Mr. Tibbs refuses. "I can bring that fat cat down! I can pull him off this hill!" Gillespie smiles in recognition. "Hey, you're just like the rest of us".
Later, Mr. Tibbs is driving by himself, and a car full of Bos, Lukes, and Cooters tries to ram him off the road. They've got a big confederate flag on their hood, natch. They run Mr. Tibbs off the road and chase him into a warehouse. Mr. Tibbs gets a big metal pipe and prepares to do battle, in a truly nail-biting harrowing scene. Gillespie shows up just in time and runs the Duke Brothers off. He tells Mr. Tibbs to leave, now! Mr. Tibbs pretends to agree, but instead goes to Sam and convinces him to take him on the patrol ride and recreate the events that led up to him finding the body. Sam agrees to do so, and eventually Gillespie joins them. The guy Ralph at the diner refuses to serve Mr. Tibbs, literally quaking with self-righteous anger. Fuck you, Ralph.
Mr. Tibbs somehow determines that Sam has gone a different route than he did the other night (still not sure how he figured that out) and calls him on it. Sam denies this, but Gillespie is suspicious. They next day, he checks Sam's bank records and learns that he deposited 600 dollars the night after the murder. Gillespie decides that Sam killed and then robbed Colbert, and arrests him. Meanwhile, a 16 year old girl and her older brother enter the precinct, and wish to speak to Gillespie privately. "It's about Sam". Mr. Tibbs insists on hearing the conversation, which makes the brother furious. He tells Gillespie that Sam slept with his sister and got her pregnant, and wants him arrested for rape. Mr. Tibbs is not buying the story, though. He learns from prisoner Harvey that there's a colored woman in town who performs abortions on the sly, and goes to visit her that night. He asks her if she has an appointment with anyone. The girl shows up and Mr. Tibbs chases after her. She runs outside and Ralph the diner guy pulls a gun on him. The girl falls into Ralph's arms, and it all clicks into place for Mr. Tibbs. The girl's brother and the Dukes show up just then. They tells Mr. Tibbs they're going to kill him, but Mr. Tibbs says that Ralph is the father, not Sam, and that the girl was going to have an abortion tonight. The girl's brother searches his sister's purse, finds the 100 for the abortion, and then points the gun at Ralph. Ralph shoots him first. Mr. Tibbs then overpowers Ralph and holds the gun on Bo and Luke and Cooter.
The case is solved, as Ralph then confesses to killing Colbert to get the money for an abortion, and it's time for a poignant goodbye. Gillespie walks Mr. Tibbs to the train, hands him his suitcase and tells him to take care. Mr. Tibbs smiles, then boards the train. Racism cured!
Review: Wow. The "murder mystery" element of the case is pretty procedural, but it's the ambiance that surrounds it, as well as the amazing acting and writing that make this movie as phenomenal as it is. The setting itself is a rich character, a dangerous world, where we feel Mr. Tibb's alienation as acutely as if we were there ourselves. Every extra, every bit player, including the black characters, look at Mr. Tibbs in his expensive new suit with suspicion and aggression. This could've very easily fallen into a preachy, after-school special place, where we learn about the evils of racism in a didactic way, but that doesn't happen. It's not just an "important" film. It's a good one, too. And we get a story we can sink our teeth into, about the relationship between to very different men who begrudgingly come to respect one another. As great as Poitier is, it's Stieger who really captivates me. He plays Gillespie as a man who has great intelligence somewhere deep inside him, but almost can't let it be shown, for fear of being shunned by the community he serves. It's simply wonderful to see him slowly come around on Mr. Tibbs, and it's never done in a "hugging, learning" type of way where you think they're going to be Facebook friends one day. There was also the danger of making Mr. Tibbs the noble saint, who suffers these fools in silence. But Poitier doesn't play it that way at all. He still knows "his place" in the sense that he can't be as free to do or say what he wants as he probably would be back home, but he has a line, and won't let anyone cross it. Apparently, in the original script, Endicott slaps him, but he doesn't slap him back, but Poitier lobbied to have it changed, and had it put in his contract that no theatre would cut it out. The character's also fallible, at first focusing on "taking down" Endicott, despite their being no real evidence of his guilt. It's also interesting to me to read that there was a lot of nervous jokes by white audiences around the country at the time of the release. The movie's unofficial nickname became "Super Spade vs. The Rednecks", even by well-meaning liberal types. Reminds me of Brokeback Mountain, the first mainstream gay movie, that broke the same type of ground that this movie did forty years earlier. For about a year, every talk show host thought that they idea of two cowboys in love was the funniest thing ever. When people are uncomfortable, they laugh. Now, I think a movie like that would come and go without comment. (Like I Love You, Phillip Morris, which also starred two big name actors).
Stars: Five out of five.
Next, "Silence of the Lambs", and then "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid". I've seen one of those before. If you can't guess which one, then you must not know me very well.
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