Why does FBI agent Anderson (Gene Hackman) like baseball? Because, as he keeps telling people in Mississippi Burning, "it's the only game where a black man can wave a stick at a white man without starting a riot."
Were there in 1964 (or for that matter, have there ever been) FBI men like Anderson, who does not seem to own a black suit or a snap-brim fedora, who talks like a human being instead of a prerecorded announcement and shuffles slyly rather than striding officiously through an investigation? Were there, have there been, agents like his immediate superior Ward (Willem Dafoe),...