Plot: After a group of young revolutionaries break into a corporation's headquarters and steal $5,000,000 worth of heroin to keep it off the street, they call on San Francisco Police Lieutenant Virgil Tibbs for assistance. Though sympathetic to their cause, the straight-arrow Tibbs refuses to consider it because they broke the law, but when the group is then accused of a murder it didn't commit, Tibbs finally joins them in order to ferret out the identity of the real killer, while keeping his now rogue undercover investigation a secret from his SFPD superiors.
Alternative Plot: When an executive and a night watchman are killed in a San Francisco office building, Lt. Virgil Tibbs (Sidney Poitier) is called in to investigate and discovers the watchman was actually killed elsewhere. Soon Tibbs is contacted by urban revolutionaries who confess to kidnapping -- but not killing -- the watchman in a botched attempt to expose a heroin ring operating out of the building. Tibbs believes them, but when his superiors learn of his ties to the group, he's suspended from the force.
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