| Director | Alan Parker |
|---|---|
| Budget | $15 million |
| Box office | $34.6 million |
In 1964, three civil rights workers – two Jewish and one black – went missing while they were in fictional Jessup County, Mississippi (the actual events took place in Neshoba County), organizing a voter registry for African Americans. The FBI sends Alan Ward and Rupert Anderson to investigate. Ward is a Northerner, senior in rank but much younger than Anderson, and approaches the investigation by the book. In contrast, Anderson, a former sheriff in Mississippi, is more nuanced in his approach. The pair experiences difficulty conducting interviews with the local townspeople, as Sheriff Ray Stuckey and his deputies influence the public and are linked to a branch of the Ku Klux Klan. The FBI discovers the trio's torched car in a swamp.
With the help of the son of a local pastor, the FBI is finally able to bring forward a witness who saw Klansmen firebomb a house, and three white men are arrested and tried for felony arson. A local judge, however, gives the men a token suspended sentence while deriding the FBI as "outside agitators" who provoked the men to violence. He then releases the men, who promptly hang the witness's father and attempt to kill the witness. The FBI evacuates the family to the north and realizes they will receive absolutely no help at all from the local authorities.
Meanwhile, Anderson has developed a close relationship with the wife of Deputy Sheriff Clinton Pell, who, in a tearful confirmation, reveals to Anderson that the three missing men have been murdered by her husband and his Klansmen collaborators, who then buried the bodies in an earthen dam. After the bodies are discovered, revealing to the nation that the disappearance of the civil rights workers was murder, Pell brutally beats his wife in retribution for her betrayal.
Ward and Anderson's different approaches eventually erupts into a physical fight, which concludes when Ward pulls his gun on Anderson and admits that his methods have been ineffective; Ward gives Anderson carte blanche to deal with the problem in his way. Anderson devises a strategy to indict the Klan members for civil rights violations instead of murder, because civil rights violations are federal crimes for which conviction is more certain than state-level charges of murder. The FBI arranges the kidnapping of Mayor Tilman, taking him to a remote shack, where he is left with a black man who threatens to castrate him unless he speaks out. Tilman gives him a complete description of the killings, including the names of those implicated, such as Frank Bailey and business executive Clayton Townley. The abductor is revealed to be an FBI operative, Monk, who has been assigned to intimidate Tilman. Although the information is inadmissible in court because it was obtained through coercion, it proves essential to the investigators.
Anderson and Ward concoct a plan to lure the identified Klan members to a bogus meeting. The men soon understand that they have been set up, and they leave the fake meeting without discussing the murders. The FBI focuses on Lester Cowens, a nervous Klansman whom the agents believe might yield a confession. The Feds pick him up and interrogate him. Anderson and Pell tussle at the local barbershop in retaliation for Pell attacking his wife, Anderson takes off presently. Later, Cowens is at home when a shotgun blast shatters his windows. After seeing a burning cross on his lawn, he attempts to escape in his truck only to be caught by several hooded men intent on hanging him. The team arrives to rescue him, having staged the entire scene, and the hooded men are revealed to be other FBI agents.
Cowens, in need of protection and believing that his redneck brothers have threatened his life for his admissions with the FBI, finally incriminates his accomplices. The Klansmen are charged with civil rights violations. Most of the perpetrators are convicted and sentenced to 3–10 years in prison, while Sheriff Stuckey is acquitted. The FBI later finds Mayor Tilman has hanged himself, and Agent Bird wonders why. Ward says Tilman was guilty by association for witnessing the events. Mrs. Pell returns to find her home completely ransacked by vandals. She resolves to stay and rebuild her life, free of her husband. Before they depart town, Anderson and Ward visit an integrated congregation, gathered at an African American cemetery, where the black civil rights activist's desecrated gravestone reads, "Not Forgotten."