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| DIRECTED BY |
| Oliver Stone |
| STARRING |
| Kevin Costner |
| Kevin Bacon |
| Tommy Lee Jones |
| Laurie Metcalf |
| Gary Oldman |
| Michael Rooker |
| Sissy Spacek |
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Was it a conspiracy, or was the Warren Commission right all along? Was Lee Harvey Oswald the lone gunman on that fateful day in Dallas, or was it an elaborate plot that not only involved more than one gunman, but also the CIA, the FBI, Fascist and Communist groups, the Mafia, and the Russians? Oliver Stone amalgamates his conspiracy theories into this endlessly fascinating study of the Kennedy assassination and its ambiguous intricacies.
I’ve always treated the fact that John F. Kennedy was assassinated as simply an unfortunate occurrence in American history; it was just common knowledge for me. It wasn’t until I finally saw and subsequently read about this film that I realized just why the Kennedy assassination still remains a public phenomenon after all these years. Oliver Stone received a lot of heat from the media (journalists in particular) upon this film’s release. He was discredited as being paranoid, and many critics attacked the film for presenting erroneous information to the public. And then I remembered that this film is a drama, not a documentary. A dramatic film is about ideas, and Stone was in no way obligated to present only the facts. If he did that, then ‘JFK’ would be a film comprised of nothing more than unimaginative proclamations. Instead of further pulling the wool over peoples’ eyes, Stone - thankfully - cut a few holes in it.
Rarely does the sheer volume of ideas presented in a film actually overshadow its performances, but in this case, ‘JFK’ does. Kevin Costner seems adequate as the aggressive attorney Jim Garrison, who takes his questions to the next level by fighting against the system to get answers. Meanwhile, Stone serves as our cinematic maestro who creatively employs stock footage, still photographs, voice-overs, dramatic music, quick pans, frantic editing, and meaningful variations between black and white and color to make this film an absorbing 189 minutes.
Implications form the basis of this film, not proven facts – I’m not denying that. I wasn’t hoping for the truth when I sat down to watch this film, I was hoping for an engaging argument concerning the undeniably suspicious ‘facts’ that we’ve all been lead to believe about the Kennedy assassination; if I got just that, I’d be impressed. I’m impressed.
