
In the Heat of the Night 55th Anniversary presented by TCM
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Synopsis
Cast
- Sidney Poitier
- Rod Steiger
- Warren Oates
- Quentin Dean
- James Patterson
- William Schallert
- Lee Grant
- Scott Wilson
- Matt Clark
- Anthony James
Atom User Reviews
This was my parents favorite movie and I've seen it many times but not on the big screen. You miss a lot of the nuance on the small screen. I love having the opportunity to see it on the big screen. Fantastic.
Apparently I had never seen the whole movie before. Was quite surprised. Knew the song, knew some outtakes, but not the movie. Was a great film. And having grown up and lived through those times and those prejudices, was a nice reflection back on the history of my life.
Metacritic
Though the film portrays the racism of the South as institutional and inescapable, it’s a little too eager to offer glimmers of hope with increasing frequency as the film nears its end and Tibbs and Gillespie come to understand each other better.

Yes, it’s a thriller with a murder mystery at the heart of it. But “whodunnit” is immaterial to the film’s thrills, and the one thing I seem to forget every time I watch it anew.

The sheer tactlessness of its racial confrontation has a forthright quality and a not entirely intentional documentary realism, especially in the scenes shot on location in Sparta, Illinois (standing in for a fictional Mississippi town).
