Other Titles • Ghosts of Mississippi • Ghosts From the Past (1996) • Das Attentat (1997)
Synopses for Ghosts of Mississippi (1996)
1.
Rob Reiner, who used to be more interested in personal style as a filmmaker, continues to duck behind bland movies about important ideas with this based-on-fact film about the embattled white prosecutor (Alec Baldwin) who brought racist killer Byron De La Beckwith (James Woods) to justice after 30 years of failed attempts. Charged with the murder of civil rights leader Medgar Evers, Beckwith slimes up the film pretty well via Woods's somewhat showy performance, while Baldwin generously assumes the usual clichés surrounding reluctant heroes. Whoopi Goldberg is at her most stately as Evers's widow. The whole self-important production is dogged by the obvious thought that it might have played better (and to far more people than it did in theaters) on television. --Tom Keogh
(16 votes)
2.
Fueled by James Woods’s chilling portrayal of Klansman Byron De La Beckwith, the cold-blooded, unrepentant killer of Medgar Evers, GHOSTS OF MISSISSIPPI offers a compelling account based on the true story of the attempt to see justice served in spite of time, corruption, and a defiant community. During the 1960s, Myrlie Evers (stirringly portrayed by Whoopi Goldberg) witnessed her husband slain in her own driveway in front of her three young children. For 30 years, Mrs. Evers petitioned the courts to reopen his case, tried twice to questionable mistrial, with her pleas eternally falling on deaf ears. Bobby DeLaughter (Alec Baldwin), while certainly an ambitious attorney, is not the most likely candidate to take on the largely forgotten case of the shooting murder of Evers, a prominent civil rights worker. The son-in-law of a well-known (and well-known to be racist) judge, DeLaughter's civil rights history is negligible; however, as a father, the case strikes his sense of fairness, justice, and family, and he takes it. From there lies an uphill battle, as many in Mississippi, even at the end of the 20th century, still hold to the traditions of segregation and resentment of those who would change them. Despite these odds, Rob Reiner's film tells the moving story of one unlikely triumph over the horrors of the past.
(15 votes)
3.
In 1963 civil rights leader Medgar Evers was murdered in his own driveway.
For 30 years his assassin has remained free.
Is it ever too late to do the right thing?
Myrlie Evers worked for the conviction of the white supremacist who murdered her husband, heroic civil rights leader Medgar Evers, through two hung juries and over 30 years. How Evers' killer was finally convicted comes to the screen with shattering emotional force in "one of the most important films of the '90s." (Paul Wunder, WBAI-FM/New York).
Directed by Rob Reiner and starring Alec Baldwin, Whoopi Goldberg and James Woods (an Academy Award nominee for his powerful work here), Ghosts Of Mississippi teems with the carefully recreated details of a relentless quest for justice and features special appearances by three children of Medgar Evers, as well as Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s daughter Yolanda.
(15 votes)
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