cinephile-27690
This movie is nearly 3 1/2 hours long but to me it felt like 2 hours. It's my 2nd favorite Kevin Costner movie after Field of Dreams. The movie gained controversy for who the movie pointed fingers at for the assassination of JFK. But it's a movie, for Pete's sake! Besides, it's decided that we will never know who did it.(Is that really a spoiler?) Like Beauty and the Beast, this is a 1991 nomination that earned Best Picture more than The Silence of the Lambs. Roger Ebert called it the best movie of the year and it was Gene Siskel's 7th. There is also numerous celebrities including Kevin Bacon, Joe Pesci(with blonde hair),Sissy Spacek, Gary Oldman, Tommy Lee Jones,Donald Sutherland, etc. Most of these are cameos. There is a lot to enjoy here, so go and do so!
jonestobias-08093
JFK from Oliver Stone is a well- executed conspiracy theory full of great performances and a nice setup of events leading up to one of the most unforgettable events in world history- the assassination of President John F Kennedy. Costner plays state attorney Garrison who has been given the arduous task of finding out who committed the heinous crime and how. The film is political and so the subject is a bit hard to sit through, but no one can question Stone's perspective or approach. This one will bring up hot debates and conspiracy theories.
bombersflyup
JFK is an interesting enough documentary style film, but is quite long and loosely based.There was no expense spared in casting, but a waste in talent I believe. Costner was good but many of the others not so much in my opinion, Pesci in particular. The length of the film was not necessary as Donald Sutherland's character basically gives Garrison all of the information in one fell swoop. There wasn't a lot of investigating accomplished, people just seem to come forth volunteering information. JFK pales in comparison to "Musings of a Cigarette Smoking Man" from the "The X-Files," on the subject matter.
Bill Slocum
The fact I believe Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone doesn't reduce my sincere admiration for this involving, brilliantly packaged indictment of the processes used to affirm his guilt. As a movie, "JFK" rises above any duty to history to develop what director- writer Oliver Stone calls a "countermyth" to what he calls the myth of the Warren Report.In short, it became a template for inculcating what I would call "paranoid chic," a desire to question comforting ideas that goes beyond all rational objections to fashion a mesmerizing if flawed piece of entertainment. "JFK" is, in more than one way, revolutionary.New Orleans, November 22, 1963. While news of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy filters through barrooms and reaches the office of district attorney Jim Garrison (Kevin Costner), an argument between right-wing hothead detective Guy Banister (Ed Asner) and his alcoholic gopher Jack Martin (Jack Lemmon) over strange goings-on in their office escalates into a violent assault. In time, this becomes the lynchpin of an investigation Garrison undertakes that becomes a re-investigation of the Kennedy murder, one that will lead to the only indictment of anyone accused of the president's killing.Garrison spends much time trying to unravel the "tangled web" at the heart of the killing, with much attention paid to the unique character of New Orleans, a city where accused assassin Lee Harvey Oswald spent much of his life. With a flair for detail and a pregnant line, Stone puts us at Garrison's side as he closely questions a bizarre character named David Ferrie (Joe Pesci) who drove to Texas on that fatal day, he says for some ice skating and geese shooting. Big Jim shakes his head."I find your story simply not believable," he says."Really?" Ferrie responds amiably. "What part?"It's a welcome moment of levity that demonstrates Stone's complete command of the material. For more than three hours, he brings up a slew of bigger-than-life witnesses who either convince us with their honesty or repel us with their sinister indifference to what happened. In time, Garrison is mocked on national television, betrayed like Jesus by one of his closest aides, and faces divorce before getting the chance to make the case he has built to a jury in a lengthy yet gripping courtroom sequence, one of the finest ever made.The sequences work as vignettes, many of them worth watching over and over. Lolita Davidovich shines in a brief turn as Beverly Oliver, a self-described "two-bit showgirl" who once saw Oswald at a club with his future killer, Jack Ruby (Brian Doyle-Murray). Tommy Lee Jones oozes southern charm as the man Garrison eventually brings to trial, Claw Shaw.Only a couple of sequences hint at a larger truth, that Stone is throwing up a lot of clay pigeons in his attempt to fashion his countermyth. One witness, Jean Hill, is ridiculously dragged screaming from the murder scene to be told by officials in a ludicrous scene that she didn't see or hear what she, and we, just did. There is also some misdirection thrown in the direction of three tramps picked up at the scene, which Stone in his 2001 director's commentary admits turned out not to be the assassins the movie paints them as being.But in the main, the film holds together very well by keeping the focus on Garrison, who speaks forthrightly about what he believes. As in his performance in "The Untouchables," Costner is a master of understatement who saves his passion for the final summation in court. It's hard to keep a dry eye watching him go.After, you can shake your head all you want. I surely do. But "JFK" has left a mark on the American consciousness that feels well-earned when watching it. By enshrining skepticism as not only patriotic but a citizen's duty, the film successfully pushes a less comfortable view of what life is really all about that has become its most lasting legacy, and does so in a way that makes three and a half hours feel like a handful of minutes. Truly epic, however mistaken.
