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Created Apr 19, 2009 02:37AM PST • Edited Apr 19, 2009 02:37AM PST

1. Quality

2. Summary

   Very Good 3.5

   Sidney Poitier takes on Southern racism and murder in an engaging and quite ground-breaking film – one which angers and satisfies in equal measure, and presents the very real struggle for civil rights in 1960s America.

4. Acting

   Very Good 3.5

   Poitier himself is the undoubted star, but Steiger is great as the racist cop who slowly comes to accept Tibbs. The rest of the cast are quite anonymous, but there are some notable contributions.

5. Male Stars Really Great 4.5

   Sidney Poitier gives one of the performances of his career here as Virgil Tibbs, a black police officer in the wrong town at just the wrong time. He presents Tibbs as a man who has been forced to travel back into the horrors of his past and face racism – and a man who deals with this with a more than able anger and resistance. Rod Steiger plays Chief Gillespie, the police officer who fingers Tibbs for a murder, and keeps him to help solve the crime. Steiger’s performance is exemplary – beginning out as a racist scumbag like the other townsfolk, he slowly becomes more and more amiable toward Tibbs, and the character’s travels from one extreme to the other are made believable by Steiger’s understated presentation of Gillespie.

6. Female Stars Good 3.0

   There aren’t any, so the score is accordingly adjusted.

7. Female Costars Good 3.0

   Lee Grant plays the wife of the murdered man, Leslie Colbert, and like many of the other people in the film, remains racist towards Tibbs despite begrudgingly accepting his skills as a police officer. She has the biggest female part in the film, which is a slight shame, but then the movie is centred around the masculine battles.

8. Male Costars Very Good 3.5

   Warren Oates plays the police officer Sam Wood, whose attitudes change in line with Gillespie’s. Oates portrays the slightly dim-witted Oates as a slimy man – at one point, he is accused of the crime in question, and it’s quite a testament to his performance that you’re never quite sure with this guy. Larry Gates is perhaps the other most pertinent co-star to mention – his racist landowner Endicott is only in one scene, but he embodies the very worst of human nature with his behaviour towards Tibbs, and it’s quite impressive that the actor manages to present this archaic figure with such malevolence.

10. Film

    Very Good 3.5

    The film, released in 1967, is highly charged with the racism and bigotry that America had been trying to rid itself of – not a film that would have been received all that well. Norman Jewison makes a film that otherwise could have been terrible a great crime thriller as well as a movie that could symbolise the civil rights struggle.

11. Direction Great 4.0

    Norman Jewison ably takes this quite contentious story and makes it a great thriller – all the time that you wonder on the murderer’s identity, you’re concious of the peril that surrounds Tibbs, and to make a film with such clear opposition to racism in the 1960s must indeed have been a brave move. Jewison manages to coax fantastic performances from his cast as well, presenting a film that has everything right going for it.

12. Play Great 4.0

    Much of this is racist slurs – and the disgusting way in which the whites address the blacks is at times really quite uncomfortable to watch. Fortunately, the dialogue for Poitier is witty, powerful and seeping with anger – there are times when you can’t help but smile at his indignant responses to the outdated racism he receives from the townsfolk.

13. Music Very Good 3.5

    Ray Charles’ title song bookends the film, reminding the audience of where Tibbs has come from and is going back to – the more civilised, more liberal cities. The music presented whilst he resides in the town reflects the confusion and collision between the townsfolk and Tibbs, and provides an interesting backdrop to the plot.

14. Visuals Good 3.0

    The brash, hot Deep South was filmed nowhere near where it’s said to be set – but this nevertheless looks the part, with the old town falling into disrepair. The action (when it happens) is surprisingly fast and fluid for a 1960s film too.

15. Content

16. Edge

    Risqué 2.3

    There’s a lot of racist epithets thrown around here, and just for that the film gets this score. There’s a bit of violence, but nothing blood-curdlingly disgusting.

17. Sex Innocent 1.0

18. Violence Fierce 2.3

19. Rudeness Nasty 3.7

21. Reality

    Natural 1.0

    This could have been an all-too real scenario in the 1960s – though perhaps Tibbs would not have been quite so easily ingratiated into the society as he is here.

22. Circumstantial Natural 1.0

23. Biological Natural 1.0

24. Physical Natural 1.0