By John Solomon
How the government's punishing of the exposure of official wrongdoing can linger for years
Director Rod Lurie's Americanized remake is a surprisingly respectful adaptation, with many scenes and lines of dialogue remaining virtually unchanged. But the tweaks he's made don't make the remake any better — quite the opposite.
If, as Michael Medved contends, Hollywood hates America, then it really, really hates Mississippi. A long line of films have cemented the state's image in American culture as a brutal, benighted backwater teeming with violent bigots.
Mr. Lurie, credited as a co-writer as well as director of the remake — shot in Louisiana, standing in for Mississippi — told the Miami Herald that he chose the setting to "plant these characters in a community where the lifestyle is violence."
