Smartorhypo Highly Overrated But Still Good

Stevecorp Don't listen to the negative reviews

Tacticalin An absolute waste of money

Sharkflei Your blood may run cold, but you now find yourself pinioned to the story.

ma-cortes Weak sequel to immensely popular ¨In the heat of the night¨ finds San Francisco Police Lieutenant Virgil Tibbs (Sidney Poitier) called in to investigate when a liberal street preacher (Martin Landau) is suspicious the murder a prostitute . This implicated preacher results to be Virgil's good friend . As Inspector Virgil is again investigating a killing and attempting to clear his friend , as well . The African-American detective now married (to Barbara McNair) with family pursues baddies and tries to bust a major dope-smuggling operation . An inferior follow-up that has action , suspense , drama , thrills , violence and intriguing finale . This packs the further adventures of the role Tibbs/Sidney Poitier created for the film ¨In the heat of the night¨ . The picture turns out to be slow , boring and it has dated one bit . The movie is realized in Television style , though contains some exciting chase sequences , pursuits and surprising ending . Here Sidney Poitier reprises his ordinary character , giving nice acting . Remaining cast is frankly well such as : Anthony Zerbe , Beverly Todd , Juano Hernandez , Jeff Corey , Norma Crane , David Sheiner , Edward Asner who wears a full toupee for his part and special mention for Martin Landau . Atmospheric cinematography and excellent music score by Quincy Jones in his usual style . The trilogy starts with the excellent ¨In the heat of the night¨ (1967) that won 5 Oscars , in which Tibbs joins forces with redneck sheriff who grudgingly accepts helps in resolve a bizarre killing , being directed by Norman Jewison , it stars Rod Steiger , Warren Oates , Lee Grant , Anthony James . The second installment is this ¨They called me Mister Tibbs¨ (1970) . And the third and final appearance , ¨The organization¨(1971) , by Don Medford with Barbara McNair , Shree North , Raul Julia , Ron O'Neal , Allan Garfield and Daniel J Travanti , in which Tibbs/Sidney Poitier is out to break up a ring of dope smugglers . The motion picture was middlingly directed by Gordon Douglas . This is one of various and professional works of his long career as filmmaker . He was a Hollywood veteran director, directing early movies such as ¨Little rascals¨, ¨Spanky¨. He was an expert on adventures genre as ¨Black arrow¨ and ¨Fortunes of Captain Blood¨ , both starred by Louis Hayward ; but he's mainly specialist filmmaking Western , his first was ¨ Girl rush (1944)¨ and in the 40s directed ¨Doolins of Oklahoma¨ and ¨The Nevadan¨ for duo Harry Joe Brown-Randolph Scott , as well as Wartime genre as ¨Up periscope¨. He went on directing Alan Ladd's vehicles as ¨Iron Mistress¨ and ¨The fiend who walked west¨ which resulted to be a Western rendition to ¨Kiss of death¨. In the 50s he proved his specialty on Western in the films starred by Clint Walker as ¨Fort Dobbs¨ ,¨Yellowstone Kelly¨, ¨Gold of seven Saints¨ and about legendary bandits as ¨Doolins of Oklahoma¨ and ¨Great Missouri raid¨ . After that , he filmed ¨Chuka¨ (1967) that bears remarkable resemblance to ¨Only the valiant¨ , the remake ¨Stagecoach (1966)¨ , and the superior ¨Rio Conchos¨. Douglas usually worked for Frank Sinatra in various films such as ¨Lady in Cement¨, ¨Tony Rome¨, ¨The detective¨ , ¨Robin and the 7 Hoods¨. Rating : 5,5 Passable and acceptable . The flick will appeal to Sidney Poitier fans .

Robert J. Maxwell Actually, they call him Lieutenant Tibbs. Poitier is not the same character as he was in the superior "In The Heat Of The Night," released some two years earlier. He now lives in San Francisco with a lovely wife and two cute kiddies. Only the name and the profession remain the same.Otherwise, what lifts this above the routine television crime series of the period -- "Burke's Law", "Banacek," "The Name of the Game" -- is a bigger budget and a bankable star, plus the drawing power of the title itself, a memorable line drawn from "In The Heat Of The Night." The plot: A prostitute is murdered and the available clues point to an activist minister of undetermined faith (Landau). Poitier spends most of the film tracking down other possible suspects, reluctant to see the murder pinned on his childhood friend. It ends, not happily, but with all sins paid for.The director, Gordon Douglas, had a pedestrian career. He has some distracting habits here. Often, when two people are in conversation, he doesn't shoot over one conversant's shoulder, which would give us a better sense of what's up, but rather he has the speaker look directly into the camera, sometimes in close up. I don't know why any director would do that with any frequency. What it does is draw attention to the fact that we're watching a movie, and that makes a suspension of disbelief more difficult.And it may be Douglas -- or somebody -- who is responsible for one of Poitier's poorer performances here. He's like a clone of Steve McQueen's San Francisco detective in "Bullet". Poitier is taciturn, rarely smiles, and moves about with a Zen expression. The mannerisms are especially disappointing because Poitier is one of the finest dramatic actors of his generation.Little use is made of location shooting -- a foot chase through Chinatown, a pursuit across the Golden Gate bridge into a Marin County that doesn't exist. It seems to me that some of the exteriors were shot elsewhere, probably Los Angeles, because The City seems generic. There is a clumsily staged car chase ending in a wreck. What police thriller could exist without one? Poitier gets good support though from the likes of Anthony Zerbe and Jeff Corey. Barbara McNair, as Poitier's pretty wife, isn't much help, but his son, George Spell, turns in a nice naturalistic performance.But that leads us into a problem with the script. Poitier's family life has some trumped-up problems and too much time is spent with them. The script even reduces McNair's complaints to the traditional one -- Poitier spends too much time at work and not enough with his family. She shrieks this accusation at him from a staircase, a little unconvincingly. But it's all pointless. A long scene with Poitier and Spell is irrelevant to anything that happens before or after. It diverts us from the main story, which is the murder and its solution.It's not a stupid or insulting movie. It's not part of the Blaxploitation movement popular during the 60s. Nothing is made of the race issue. The only sociopolitical point made is that Landau is working for a people's government run from store fronts, not from City Hall. It sounds "liberal" and yet it's the embodiment of "decentralization." Zerbe is described by one of his sex slaves -- the toothsome Beverly Todd -- as "AC/DC" but that plays only a small part in the plot and is not judged one way or the other.Want to see an excellent movie in a similar setting? See "Bullet" if you haven't already. Want to see an abominable and dated movie about San Francisco detectives? Try "The Laughing Policeman."

jc-osms Has to be a mistake to take the title of a sequel from the best remembered line of the originating movie - it's almost an admission that the new film can't come up with a comparable phrase. The portent is true, I fear, as Sydney Poitier reprises his Virgil Tibbs role in another would-be tough, adult, socially aware murder-thriller, but already the law of diminishing returns is applying and so "Mr Tibbs" is inferior to its predecessor in almost every way.In fact it looks and feels like nothing more than a harder-edged TV crime show of the time, no better or worse than say "Ironside", fired as it is by a fine, occasionally quirky Quincy Jones soundtrack and replete with our man's personal problems to flesh out the character. This small-screen feel is exacerbated by the appearance of TV stalwarts Martin Landau, Ed Asner and Anthony Zerbe and it's fair to say the film never rises above the heights of a better than average TV cop-show episode.It's biggest failing of course is the lack of dramatic tension which existed so memorably between Poitier's proud, methodical coloured detective and Rod Steiger's opinionated, redneck workaday sheriff in "...Heat of The Night". Here the film is centred entirely on Poitier and good actor as he is, his unerring instinct and judgement palls as the film progresses, whilst his relationship with friend, do-good minister but murder suspect Landau, never really takes off either. Indeed the central "whodunnit" just isn't strong enough to drive the action on, whilst Tibbs' various interludes with his family slow down the action still further, especially the ho-hum scenes with his "difficult" son.The film is dated of course by its politics and attitudes - no crime in that - but it doggedly fails to fly and in the end stays as little in the memory as even the best remembered episode of any Kojak / Columbo episode you care to mention. Waiting in the wings, of course was a different kind of black detective who was a sex-machine to all the chicks, to take the genre further - can you dig it!

monsieurdl Despite the flaws noted above with regards to continuity and occasional lapses in writing, the movie is saved by the great acting provided by Sidney Poitier, Anthony Zerbe, Martin Landau, and Ed Asner (despite his short appearance). Poitier delivers the same riveting performance he did as in the successful In the Heat of the Night, adding a family life that is pretty typical for a father who is often away from his children. Anthony Zerbe is a shade better, however, in his role as sleazy landlord Rice Weedon. Zerbe was tailor-made for this role, as his ability to play bad guys is utilized perfectly. Martin Landau as the reverend does what is expected and more, adding a human quality that is even throughout. Ed Asner as the nervy manager takes everything that he had (not very much) and ran with it, making his character believable. I would recommend this movie highly to anyone who enjoys movies of this era and genre- particularly if you are fond of gritty, down in the mud reality.