Ghosts of Mississippi

Thirty years after the event, Assistant DA Bobby DeLaughter (Baldwin) is out to secure a conviction for the murder of Medgar Evers, one-time chief civil rights worker in the frontline state of Mississippi. True, DeLaughter, in association with several hard-working colleagues and with the key involvement of Evers' widow Myrlie, tracked down new witnesses and a lost murder weapon to help bring a case against Byron De La Beckwith (Woods, Oscar nominated), originally acquitted after two hung juries. Certainly the DA, who'd been 11 at the time of the killing in 1963, had marital problems because of the pressure and unpopularity of the case, but no amount of emotional ballast in the film can make up for the tedium and repetition inevitable when a murder is shown and then dissected in two separate court hearings. Indeed, the only pluses are the ever-watchable Woods and Whoopi Goldberg's excellent, understated showing as Evers' widow.