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.
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.
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.
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.
Meanwhile, 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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Meanwhile, 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.
