Sometimes simple living isn’t all it’s cracked up to be in other movies such as River Rat and Witness.
This is a thriller movie with Sidney Poitier as a detective. He is waiting for a train at the depot when he is arrested for suspicion of murder. They quickly find out that he was innocent since he is also a police officer but they get his help with solving a murder that occurred involving a wealthy guy who is going to open a factory and give a lot of local black people jobs.
The chemistry in this movie between Poitier and his partner is pretty great. This would be decades before the buddy cop movies would make it big, but I guess you could consider this as one of the earliest prototypes for the genre. Not only does it work as an entertaining thriller, but it also makes a message.
The idea of putting a black guy into a small southern town and giving him some authority during the late 1960s and several years before other movies with black people such as Live and Let Die became popular was quite the thing to do at the time. I am certain this caused quite the raucous with people who up until this time were all about the segregation. This broke down the barriers between different groups of people and that is good to see.
Site Title 