| United Artists | Release Date: August 3, 1967 | CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION | ||
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Positive:
13
Mixed:
2
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews
It’s a pleasure, all too rare, to watch two splendid actors pitted against each other with equal force such as Sidney Poitier and Rod Steiger in the exceptional murder mystery, In the Heat of the Night. Over the years I remember a few extraordinary cases of this kind - Spencer Tracy and Clark Gable in “San Francisco.” Alec Guinness and Jack Hawkins in “The Prisoner,” Richard Burton and Peter O’Toole in “Becket.”
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But here Norman Jewison has taken a hard, outspoken script, prepared by Stirling Silliphant from an undistinguished novel by John Ball, and, with stinging performances contributed by Rod Steiger as the chief of police and Sidney Poitier as the detective, he has turned it into a film that has the look and sound of actuality and the pounding pulse of truth.
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Steiger got the best actor Oscar for his masterful, Method deep-dive portrayal of Gillespie, a man just smart enough to know he's neither as talented as Tibbs nor as ignorant as the people around him. His jaw always working a wad of gum, his beady eyes darting, his blood pressure stroke-level as he spits out orders, he manages to play big without ever splitting the seams of his character.
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No deep solutions are suggested in this subtle and meticulously observed study. Yet Director Norman Jewison has used his camera to extract a certain rough-cut beauty from each protagonist. He has shown, furthermore, that men can join hands out of fear and hatred and shape from base emotions something identifiable as a kind of love. In this he is immeasurably helped by performances from Steiger and Poitier that break brilliantly with black-white stereotype.
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The twist-filled storyline, which digs up nasty secrets all over the show and offers a satisfying range of suspicious suspects and a truly disgusting killer, remains gripping, and the excellent, understated lead performances don't harp on the racial angle in that embarassing fashion which makes so many Socialy Significant films instantly dated.
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Fast and enjoyable, with Poitier's color used for comedy.
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