They got a murder on their hands. They don’t know what to do with it.

African-American Philadelphia police detective Virgil Tibbs is arrested on suspicion of murder by Bill Gillespie, the racist police chief of tiny Sparta, Mississippi. After Tibbs proves not only his own innocence but that of another man, he joins forces with Gillespie to track down the real killer. Their investigation takes them through every social level of the town, with Tibbs making enemies as well as unlikely friends as he hunts for the truth.
In the Heat of the Night keeps every mind human — it fights its subject at zero distance. The story fights on E8/E9/E10 of the E0–E14 reality ladder.
Films fighting at the same level of reality, about the same things.
The same preoccupations examined at another scale — one mind versus a nation.