In the Heat of the Night

In the Heat of the Night was a much different cop flick then we have looked at thus far. The issue of racisms was the main theme of the movie. We are introduced to the two main characters, one being the southern white cop, Office Gillespie and the other is a northern African American Cop, Virgil Tibbs. The first time the two officers meet is when Virgil is brought into the office as a suspect for murder only because he is a black man, in a small town in Mississippi where racism is strong and the people are not accepting of African Americans. As soon as the Officer Gillespie and others in the town find out that Virgil is a well paid cop from Philadelphia and will be reluctantly staying to investigate a murder, people of the town cannot believe that a black man is going to be staying in their town.

The story line of In the Heat of the Night contains many of the topics we have been discussing in class. There is the idea of the white cop, black cop. In the film Virgil is the more intelligent cop and he is teaching all of the white cops how to work in homicide whether they like it or not. This is not always easy for him because the whole town treats him differently except for Gillespie. For the most of the movie Gillespie does not want to accept the fact that an African American man could be making more money, and is the smarter cop than him. Although he feels this way he is always watching out for Virgil to make sure that no one in the town will hurt him, or ultimately kill him. Finally in the end when Virgil was right about who was the murder was Gillespie truly accepts him. When he drops him off at the train station the audience can tell that he has changed his views on African Americans by working with Virgil. This film could also relate to Beverly Hills Cop, Eddie Murphy has to teach the cops of Beverly Hills how to solve a murder. Although Murphy is not dealing with race to the same extent as Sidney Poitier was, he still wasn’t accepted by the white cops until the end of the film.