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.

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.

Keith Phipps

The Dissolve

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.

Roger Moore

Movie Nation

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).

Peter Bradshaw

The Guardian