In the dark of night, a passenger train rolls to a stop alongside a small, vacant station. A man steps off the train and surveys his surroundings, resigning himself to a multi-hour wait for his next train in the steamy heat of the American South. This man is a homicide detective from Philadelphia passing through Sparta, Mississippi on his way home. Sparta gives off a sleepy vibe coupled with the tension any person of color would feel in the South in the 1960’s. While Detective Virgil Tibbs (they call him Mr. Tibbs) waits in the station minding his own business, in town, a patrol officer discovers a body dumped in an alley with obvious signs of foul play. With the discovery, events are set in motion that depict individual and communal struggles with racism and a battle between doing the right thing and self-preservation.

As number 75 on the American Film Institute’s 100 Years…100 Movies – 10th Anniversary Edition, In the Heat of the Night allows the viewer to time travel back to the Sixties and experience a slice of prejudice and racism that, unfortunately, is noticeably still present 54 years later. The movie does not have any of the shiny gloss of a modern production, and that gives it an appropriately gritty feeling. Watching, you can feel the isolation of a small-town and the type of inescapable swampy heat that gets into your bones. The risk and tempers rise with the temperature. Detective Virgil Tibbs, iconically played by Sidney Poitier, is never far from danger. Not only does he shoulder the burden of guiding a murder investigation, he is alone in a region where nobody wants him around and is not afraid to make that point either verbally or with violent action. The constant risk and overt racism makes Tibbs’ susceptible to mistakes and bravado, because he is trying to show he is a better detective than the local law enforcement and to prove to the folks of Sparta, Mississippi their prejudiced mindset toward anyone of color is, unequivocally, wrong. Tibbs is forced to jump through hoop after hoop to earn begrudging cooperation while putting his life at risk. You root for him at every turn, wanting him to stick it to the man and drop a bombshell revelation to the murder investigation.

The bombshell never comes. Yes, there is an arrest, but it is unsatisfying. And so, the story in Sparta, Mississippi ends to leave you, the viewer, sighing in relief and asking if there was supposed to be more. Like so many stories, the trip is fantastic while the ending does not respect the journey. I ended watching In the Heat of the Night with a shrug and the statement, “Okay, I guess it’s done.” What the film did leave me with, however, was a sobering reinforcement that even though years pass, the United States can still be a terrible place for many groups of people. Like many of its peers on the AFI list, In the Heat of the Night is a cinematic heavyweight because of its social enlightenment as much as the storytelling and cinematography. There is cultural significance to a movie like this, because it holds up a mirror and lets us all know there is endless opportunity to be better.