Redundant and unnecessary.

It's funny watching the elements come together in this complicated scam. On one hand, the set-up isn't quite as complex as it seems, but there's an easy sense of fun in every exchange.

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

This is a dark and sometimes deeply uncomfortable drama

San Francisco Police Lieutenant Virgil Tibbs (Sidney Poitier) is called in to investigate the murder of a prostitute. A community activist Rev. Logan Sharpe (Martin Landau) is accused of the murder.This is possibly the most disappointing sequel of all times. Coming after the iconic 'In the Heat of the Night', this is best left to the bargain bin of movie history. The story is little more than a rambling police case. There isn't anything here that all other police drama hasn't done. The production value is best describe as 70s TV level. It has no energy, no tension, and no excitement. Sidney Poitier is the only thing that's of any interest. And he looked as frustrated as I was while watching this grind.

I enjoyed Sidney Poitier's performance in "In the Heat of the Night". But this sequel/spin-off was unsettling and uncalled for at best. The story editing was extremely weak and at times I found it hard to take any care for the characters, even the great Virgil Tibbs himself. The plot was absolutely pitiful it's like an extended version of a bad episode of the TV series "The Streets of San Francisco", and yet that was a good show with hit or miss episodes. The character flaws provided by Virgil Tibbs have no connection to the ones in "In the Heat of the Night". In the previous film, he was a veteran cop from Philadelphia, not married, had no offspring, nada! We turn to 1970, he's now living in San Francisco, married with three teenage kids and claims he's been a S.F.P.D. for the past twelve years. What gives?Also we see African Americans and White Americans coexisting like there never was a Civil Rights Movement. I'll accept if it's just a ploy for people to get over it and forget about the past. But it still existed and not every American at the time was had adjusted to it. I also feel bad for Ed Asner who had a thankless role was a suspect running from a crime, not the one in the main story, but for committing a philandering act on his wife. The car chase depicted here was absolutely abysmal. Tibbs is often in dragging scenes with his mannequin partner who remains mute and smokes like a chimney. In fact with the exception of Tibbs, all the other cops are just paper dolls. The killer in the movie's reason for killing the hooker has no sense of purpose and his personality doesn't connect well either. Also Tibbs' catchphrase is never once uttered in this movie at all. Poitier doesn't have the drive that his iconic character portrayed when he co-starred with Rod Steiger. In the previous film, Poitier was the most electrifying character in that movie. But in this movie spin-off, he is a shell of his former character. Sidney let me ask you, why did you agree to do this movie? If it was for the money, then I answered my own question.

Has to be a mistake to take the title of a sequel from the best remembered line of the originating movie - it's almost an admission that the new film can't come up with a comparable phrase. The portent is true, I fear, as Sydney Poitier reprises his Virgil Tibbs role in another would-be tough, adult, socially aware murder-thriller, but already the law of diminishing returns is applying and so "Mr Tibbs" is inferior to its predecessor in almost every way.In fact it looks and feels like nothing more than a harder-edged TV crime show of the time, no better or worse than say "Ironside", fired as it is by a fine, occasionally quirky Quincy Jones soundtrack and replete with our man's personal problems to flesh out the character. This small-screen feel is exacerbated by the appearance of TV stalwarts Martin Landau, Ed Asner and Anthony Zerbe and it's fair to say the film never rises above the heights of a better than average TV cop-show episode.It's biggest failing of course is the lack of dramatic tension which existed so memorably between Poitier's proud, methodical coloured detective and Rod Steiger's opinionated, redneck workaday sheriff in "...Heat of The Night". Here the film is centred entirely on Poitier and good actor as he is, his unerring instinct and judgement palls as the film progresses, whilst his relationship with friend, do-good minister but murder suspect Landau, never really takes off either. Indeed the central "whodunnit" just isn't strong enough to drive the action on, whilst Tibbs' various interludes with his family slow down the action still further, especially the ho-hum scenes with his "difficult" son.The film is dated of course by its politics and attitudes - no crime in that - but it doggedly fails to fly and in the end stays as little in the memory as even the best remembered episode of any Kojak / Columbo episode you care to mention. Waiting in the wings, of course was a different kind of black detective who was a sex-machine to all the chicks, to take the genre further - can you dig it!

All right! I admit that following a masterpiece like "In The Heat Of The Night" is a daunting task to say the least, but since this is based on a series of detective books by author John Ball, one shouldn't expect racial politics all the time. The detective series does not use the character of Virgil Tibbs either in film or novel to exploit racial differences, although being an intelligent black man in a position of authority opened him to a certain amount of scrutiny by whites who saw him as less than their equal. But the additional character elements in the books are never utilized in any of the three motion pictures (or in the latter television series.) Tibbs was also an expert at martial arts and fluent in Asian languages, but this never popped up at any point in either form which is just as well. That might have worked in popular fiction in the 1960s, but it adds nothing to the storylines. Still, this movie as purely a detective story is lame (in my opinion) and gives him to the usual liberal stereotypes of Hollywood at this time. I won't give a spoiler, but this film's conclusion to the mystery is neither shocking nor satisfying. Such additions of actors like Martin Landau seem wasted here in a script that does not challenge either the audience or the actor. Better to see the third film in this limited series if you want a good action thriller.