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    Nostalgia Central
    Home»Movies»Movies by Decade»Movies - 1990s
    Movies - 1990s Movies - J 5 Mins Read

    JFK (1991)

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    Oliver Stone’s massive, three-hour JFK is powerful, compelling, brilliantly written and directed, superbly acted by a stellar cast of luminaries with courage and conviction, and one of the most important history lessons the cinema has ever told.

    Stone compiled a massive dossier to support his belief that Lee Harvey Oswald was just a naive pawn in a much deadlier government plot involving defence contractors, oil bankers, big business conglomerates, and the military – all of whom wanted the war in Vietnam, which President John F Kennedy opposed, in order to pump $80 million into the sagging American economy.

    jfk_garrison

    What we have here, he says, will go down in history as a right-wing military coup d’etat.

    Compiling the evidence (much of it awesomely convincing) is a painstaking effort that makes for quite an exhausting film.

    Weaving actual footage with dramatisation, JFK is not the story of an assassinated American president, although it is observed that he was set upon by assassins like Julius Caesar.

    It is the story of New Orleans district attorney Jim Garrison (played with verve, intensity, and honest inspiration by Kevin Costner in a performance that will amaze you), a man worth making a movie about because he was the only man in the country who wouldn’t put the assassination to bed.

    jfk0

    Beginning with Eisenhower’s farewell address in January 1961 and moving through the Bay of Pigs, the film deals with Khrushchev, the family album (nothing, of course, on Marilyn Monroe), right up to the fatal Dallas motorcade in 1963.

    JFK chronicles the life of the man in documentary style, then spends the rest of the three hours unveiling the plot that killed the President and toppled Camelot, parading a cast of characters so bizarre no one could make them up – including eyewitnesses who identified suspects and heard shots from different directions, then found their testimonies falsified and their signatures forged in the Warren Report.

    jfk1

    Oliver Stone seems to agree with Senator Russell Long (Walter Matthau), who says: “This dog don’t hunt.” And that’s where Jim Garrison comes in.

    Described as a “mouse fighting a gorilla,” he took on the homosexual underworld, the Mafia, the CIA, and anti-Castro forces, pimps, government informers from the Pentagon . . . everything that served his purposes in court, incurring the wrath of taxpayers, endangering his own life, and finding himself labelled “a threat to the national security structure” in the process.

    The fact that he failed to convict sleazy New Orleans subversive Clay Shaw (played with oily, reptilian grace by Tommy Lee Jones) as a co-conspirator doesn’t make the story less conclusive, only doubly shrouded in mystery.

    Garrison’s end-of-trial courtroom plea for American justice is a moving speech and Costner’s marathon monologue is worth the price of admission itself.

    jfk_oswaldshotMeanwhile, there is the joy of watching some superb actors do their stuff, including Ed Asner, Donald Sutherland, Sissy Spacek, Joe Pesci, Lolita Davidovitch, Jack Lemmon, Sally Kirkland, and John Candy.

    Kevin Bacon is especially fine as a gay hustler, and Gary Oldman makes a very convincing Oswald (pictured above right).

    The dissidence and controversy over the film – from both sides of the political fence – was inevitable. The Warren Commission report had already been labelled a fiction and there is nothing new about the conspiracy theory.

    We’ll never know the truth until the records are unsealed in the year 2029.

    Jim Garrison
    Kevin Costner
    Liz Garrison
    Sissy Spacek
    Willie O’Keefe
    Kevin Bacon
    David Ferrie
    Joe Pesci
    Clay Shaw
    Tommy Lee Jones
    Susie Cox
    Laurie Metcalf
    Lee Harvey Oswald
    Gary Oldman
    Guy Bannister
    Ed Asner
    Bill Broussard
    Michael Rooker
    Jack Martin
    Jack Lemmon
    Senator Russell Long
    Walter Matthau
    Rose Cheramie
    Sally Kirkland
    Beverly Oliver
    Lolita Davidovich
    Colonel X
    Donald Sutherland
    Dean Andrews
    John Candy
    Narration
    Martin Sheen
    Marina Oswald
    Beata Pozniak
    Lou Ivon
    Jay O. Sanders
    Jack Ruby
    Brian Doyle-Murray
    Al Oser
    Gary Grubbs
    Numa Bertel
    Wayne Knight
    Julia Ann Mercer
    Jo Anderson
    Bill Newman
    Vincent D’Onofrio
    Lee Bowers
    Pruitt Taylor Vince
    Zapruder
    Ray Lepere
    Mattie
    Pat Perkins
    LBJ
    Tom Howard
    Jasper Garrison
    Sean Stone
    Virginia Garrison
    Amy Long
    Snapper Garrison
    Scott Krueger
    Elizabeth Garrison
    Allison Pratt Davis
    Sergeant Frank Harkness
    Red Mitchell
    Carlos Bringuier
    Tony Plana
    Leopoldo
    Tomas Milian
    Angelo
    Raul Aranas
    George DeMohrenschildt
    Willem Oltmans
    Janet Williams
    Gail Cronauer
    Earlene Roberts
    Roxie M. Frnka
    J.C. Price
    Zeke Mills
    Sam Holland
    James Harrell
    Dodd
    Ray Redd
    Jean Hill
    Ellen Mcelduff
    Mary Moorman
    Sally Nystuen
    Chief Justice Earl Warren
    Jim Garrison
    Sylvia Odio
    Linda Flores Wade
    Will Fritz
    William Larsen
    General Y
    Dale Dye
    Colonel Reich
    Norman Davis
    General Lemnitzer
    John Seitz
    Officer Habighorst
    Odin K. Langford
    Miguel Torres
    Jorge Fernández
    Irvin F. Dymond
    Roy Barnitt
    Judge Haggerty
    John Finnegan
    Vernon Bundy
    Walter Breaux
    James Teague
    Michael Skipper
    Dr Peters
    I.D. Brickman
    Dr McClelland
    Joseph Nadell
    Dr Humes
    Chris Robinson
    Colonel Finck
    Peter Maloney
    Admiral Kenney
    Merlyn Sexton
    Carolyn Arnold
    Carol Farabee
    Bonnie Ray Williams
    Willie Minor
    Arnold Rowland
    Ted Pennebaker
    Marion Baker
    Bill Pickle
    Sandra Styles
    Mykel Chaves
    Tippet
    Price Carson
    Officer Poe
    Bob Orwig

    Director
    Oliver Stone

    Video

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