Jones is a 1970 American neo noir film directed by William Wyler, his final project in a career that spanned 45 years.

Jones, a wealthy African-American funeral director in fictional Somerton, Tennessee, seeks legal representation from the local law firm run by Oman Hedgepath and his newlywed nephew Steve Mundine.

Jones is seeking a divorce from his considerably younger wife Emma, alleging she had an affair with white police officer Willie Joe Worth, whom he suspects is the biological father of her unborn child.

In an effort to avoid a public scandal, Worth begs Emma not to contest the divorce, but she hopes to collect enough alimony to allow her to maintain the lavish lifestyle to which she has become accustomed.

Worth, initially cool, is suddenly horrified by what he has done and then even more so at Bumpas's subsequent, but cold bloodily practical actions in treating Jones's body like it was a side of beef and hanging it from a wrecker hook.

However, almost immediately, Bumpas, off duty, is murdered very deliberately and coolly by Sonny Boy Mosby in partial retaliation for a vicious beating he once inflicted on the man.

Sonny had recently decided not to retaliate against Bumpas for the beating, but the murder and cutting up of Jones was apparently the final straw for Mosby.

In his review in The New York Times, Vincent Canby wrote "I'm sure that Wyler and his screenwriters...were out to make a suspense movie that would also work as contemporary social commentary.

In the interests of melodrama, they have simplified the characters from Hill's novel to such a degree that they seem more stereotyped than may have been absolutely necessary...Wyler's direction is notable only for the coldness and for an impatience to get on with the story at the expense of any feeling of real involvement...I must say I wasn't bored by it, just depressed.