A bit like 'A Time to Kill'

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The big difference (other than "Ghosts" depicting events that really happened vs. "Time" being fictional) is that the focus in "Ghosts" is on the transformation of the white lawyer.

The film was criticized for that; that instead of being a movie about Evers' work, murder, and family's 30-year fight for justice, it ends up making a white guy the hero. But Reiner stated that it was the intention of the film, to focus on how whites need to get enlightened on this subject and take a stand for change to happen.

John Grisham was a practicing attorney in the state of Mississippi when he wrote "A Time to Kill," his first novel; published in 1989. The film "Mississippi Burning" (filmed in 1987, released in 1988) was the center of a lawsuit that lead to Byron De La Beckwith's conviction. Basically some klansmen sued the Hollywood producer who made "Mississippi Burning" and it ended up bringing an obscure book about the klan into the light in which a guy admits to having seen Beckwith brag about killing Evers, which helped lead to his eventual conviction. So I'd imagine that Grisham probably partially inspired by the racial tensions that he was seeing around him with the real case when he wrote the book.

i thought the same thing. they are both very great similar movies!

A TIME TO KILL is okay through the courtroom shoot-out. But after that, it falls apart and into one laugh-out-loud cliche after another.

Not that GHOSTS OF MISSISSIPPI is much better, it's so damned stiff.

MISSISSIPPI BURNING is better, but it's another White-Boys-Save-All kinda movie.

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LBJ's mistress tells all:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPdviZbk-XI&;