Ensofter Overrated and overhyped

Sexyloutak Absolutely the worst movie.

Hadrina The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

Guillelmina The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

AaronCapenBanner John Mackenzie directed this speculative drama that stars Danny Aiello as Jack Ruby, the man who fatally shot Lee Harvey Oswald, and the events that led him there, where he was the owner of a Dallas strip club who hires popular headliner Candy Cane(played by Sherilyn Fenn) who ends up under the wing of the mafia, and becomes a mistress of President Kennedy. Ruby does favors for the mafia while simultaneously informing on them for the FBI, and eventually is used by a mysterious hit man for either the CIA or Mafia to kill Oswald, though he suspects he's as much a patsy as Oswald seems to be. David Duchovny co-stars as police officer Tibbet. Despite a good performance by Aiello, film is a pale knockoff of the far superior "JFK". Not bad, but entirely forgettable.

wlfgdn Whatever his role may or may not have been in the Kennedy assassination, Jack Ruby was not a good or nice man. Trying to make anything positive out of him is imbecilic to start with and the premises for this picture don't improve any on that. Danny Aiello playing Ruby as a kind person is out of touch.There were in 1963 more than 200 million Americans so tell me what the odds are that three people who know each other closely and work together could all independently have some role in the assassination? Jack Ruby's bartender just happens to be the gunman who fires the fatal shot from the book depository window? Come on now.Anything of intelligence is hard to find in this story and there is as much evidence to support the theory that Rootie Kazootie was the gunman as there is evidence or believability for the first concept here.So far as film-making goes we can only grade C+. Never really makes you much take notice and when they get to what should be the climax they just rush through it with even less thought or effort.At worst this epistle is an insult to history. The liner notes on the inexpensive VHS I found state "forces us to reconsider the 'truth' of Kennedy's death." Well, horsepoop to that, but I will reconsider wasting time on any film by John MacKenzie. If the same mysterious shadowy people held a gun to his head and forced him to film a bad script, well then let him come forward before someone has to make another bad movie so we can find that out too.

mw1562 The reason why Jack Ruby Killed Lee Harvey Oswald was had he not done so he would have been killed himself. Sam Giancana had put Ruby in charge of the JFK assassination, and part of the plan was for Officer Tippett to kill Oswald as he was trying to escape. That didn't happen, for reasons unknown, so Ruby had to finish the job himself.The real question is how was Jack Ruby able to walk right up to the most heavily guarded man in America, guarded as he was by Secret Service, FBI, CIA, Texas State Troopers, and Dallas Police, and shoot him at point blank range. That alone should tell you that Lee Harvey Oswald did not act alone.The government would tell you that Ruby acted alone, for reasons of grief and rage, etc, but they don't want you to know the truth. They don't think we could handle the truth. They don't want us to know that JFK and his father made a deal with Sam Giancana to get elected and, once elected, the Kennedys reneged on their end of the deal.By the way, did you know that Lee Harvey Oswald was raised by his uncle in New Orleans, who was a bookie, and did you know that in 1963 all bookmakers worked for the mob? Why would the New Orleans District Attorney (Garrison) get involved in a crime that took place in Dallas? It is all related.Did you know that several weeks after the JFK assassination the Texas State Attorney General held a press conference and announced that Oswald worked for the CIA? Did you know that Oswald attended Naval Intelligence School, and shortly thereafter he went to Russia, officially as a US dissenter, but more likely as a spy?

unclealan Lets start this review on a good note: Sherilyn Fenn is a stunner in this film. She's absolutely gorgeous. Her acting, of course, is terrible given the poor script she had to work with (Candy Cane? What about Sticky Sweet?). However, her strip-tease scenes alone almost make it worth sitting through this 111 minutes of celluloid dung.That being said, I'll repeat my summary, that this is possibly the worst film I've ever seen. I'm a big fan of mob movies. I'm also a student of the Kennedy assassination, so when films address this topic, or attempt to reference the event, I like it when they at least TRY to address the facts. JFK made a brave attempt at this, even though it made Garrison look like the saint of all good causes (he wasn't), and accused everyone but the Pope of being involved in the plot.Ruby is just a bad movie, pure and simple. What made Ruby so bad wasn't the actors per se, but the terrible writing, which was non-stop speculation and fantasy, and the direction, which seemed non existent. Aiello, like Fenn, did the best with what he had, but his performance was laughable. He had to portray Ruby as a mobster with a heart, and if I had heard any more exasperated cries of "Candy Cane!" from him, I was going to puke. All the stereotypical mob elements, and actors, are in this film. Even Joe Viterelli, who like Frank Vincent seems to be in every mob movie, makes an appearance here as Joe Valachi.Yes, Ruby was a hood from Chicago, and he shot Oswald, and he associated with elements of the mafia, and he was chummy with the Dallas cops, and he went to Cuba on occasion. At least the film got this right, but that's where it ends. Ruby killed a mobster with a .38 hidden inside a movie camera? Ruby was in the same hotel in Las Vegas with a red-haired David Ferrie when Kennedy was getting laid? That's news to me. That same night, The Sun (The Sands), featured Tony Montana (Frank Sinatra), while Santos Alicante (Santos Trafficante) and the boys hosted Appalachia II right out in the public eye. Sure. Besides trying to avoid a lawsuit with all the reworked names (they did properly refer to a Sam Giancana though), the film muddles through bad plot lines with this kind of tie-it-all-together nonsense.And what was with the mysterious Maxwell character played by Arliss Howard? "I know everything Jack. Here Jack, here's a rifle. Go kill Castro. And by the way, who's the girl?" Absurd.Don't waste your time seeing this film, unless you are a Sherilyn Fenn fanatic. Fast forward, play the first strip scene, fast forward, play the last strip scene, eject, then toss it in the garbage, where it belongs.