Critical Reaction
Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reports that 86% of critics have given the film a positive review based on 274 reviews, with an average score of 8/10.
The film has been criticized by many for its fictionalization of history. In an often-quoted review in Time Magazine, Jack E. White referred to the film as a "cinematic lynching of the truth". Parker defended his film by reminding critics that it was a dramatization, not a documentary. It was also criticized for its portrayal of southern African Americans as passive victims, which also shapes the film's reenactment of the assassinations.
Read more about this topic: Mississippi Burning
Famous quotes containing the words critical and/or reaction:
“To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts. Every man is tasked to make his life, even in its details, worthy of the contemplation of his most elevated and critical hour.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Sole and self-commanded works,
Fears not undermining days,
Grows by decays,
And, by the famous might that lurks
In reaction and recoil,
Makes flames to freeze, and ice to boil.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)