Résumé: Sidney Poitier, in one of his most-celebrated roles, appears as Virgil Tibbs, a Philadelphia homicide detective who, while visiting a small Mississippi town, will find himself falsely arrested for the murder and then, in a strained collaboration with the town's sheriff (Rod Steiger), stays on to help solve the murder. Steiger's town is a backward "redneck" Southern burg whose population includes an aristocratic racist, the eccentric owner of a fly-infested diner, exceptionally stupid cops, young thugs...