Composite Score: 87.05

Starring: Kevin Costner, Kevin Bacon, Tommy Lee Jones, Laurie Metcalf, Gary Oldman, Michael Rooker, Jay O. Sanders, Sissy Spacek, Joe Pesci, Jack Lemmon, Donald Sutherland, Ed Asner, Brian Doyle-Murray, and John Candy

Director: Oliver Stone

Writers: Oliver Stone and Zachary Sklar

Genres: Drama, History, Thriller, Legal

MPAA Rating: R for language

Box Office: $205.41 million worldwide

My take on Watching This Film:

                JFK is Oliver Stone’s film that offers an alternative explanation of the assassination of John F. Kennedy to the one offered by the official Warren Report, his based on personal research and books by Louisiana lawyer Jim Garrison and conspiracy theorist Jim Marrs. The film presents a possible explanation for the president’s death that involves far more actors than simply Lee Harvey Oswald, who the film posits was merely a patsy or scapegoat. Stone, through the narrative about Jim Garrison’s pursuit of the truth behind Kennedy’s assassination and the inconsistencies of the Warren Report, lays the blame on a wide swath of movers and shakers with a variety of motives all working in tandem to remove the president from office – this laundry list of villains includes the FBI, the CIA, Texas oil men, homosexual neo-Nazis, anti-Castro Cuban exiles, and the broad concept of the “Military Industrial Complex”. In his pursuit of “truth”, Stone’s film stars Kevin Costner as the leading man Jim Garrison whose continued pulling at strings uncovers far more than he could have imagined surrounding JFK’s assassination and the seedy underworld of his hometown New Orleans. Costner is joined by a stellar ensemble in support of Stone’s venture, including Sissy Spacek as Jim’s wife Liz, Tommy Lee Jones as the dubious Clay Shaw/Bertrand, Gary Oldman as Lee Harvey Oswald, and Michael Rooker as Jim’s fellow attorney Bill Broussard. Though incredibly controversial at the time of its release, the film still received eight Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Supporting Actor (Tommy Lee Jones), and wins for Best Cinematography and Best Editing. Though most critics and audiences agree that Stone’s conclusions are a bit far-fetched, most people who have watched the epic cannot deny its excellence in execution and performances, as well as the themes that lie beneath its muddied surface.

                While, on the surface, watching JFK often feels like listening to a three-hour rant by your conspiracy-crazed relatives at a holiday dinner, it’s clear that Stone’s vision and execution are brought to full fruition in this completed film, and it ends up being a far more enjoyable and less disheartening experience than the aforementioned meal. In addition to its technical excellence, what makes this film work and the reasons for its success both upon release and to this day are the performances of its cast members and the truth that lies beneath the conspiracies that the film espouses. There’s no denying that the level of intricacy attributed to the conspiracy at the heart of Stone’s JFK strains credulity quite a bit; however, you do have to credit him with recognizing a similar strain for anyone who looks at the details of the Warren Report, and indeed, Congressional committees have gone back to the Report on Kennedy’s assassination and acknowledged oversights and inconsistencies within the findings that could warrant further examination. But that’s not really what I meant when I said that this film gets at some shred of truth – its conspiracies are still just that – what I think is worth celebrating in Stone’s film is its call for people to seek the truth. Every entity operating in the world at this moment has some agenda that they want communicated – even I have an agenda – and when we recognize this and call it out and seek to understand the truth underneath the agenda, we take power from that entity and hold it for ourselves. In the film’s final act, there’s a climactic closing argument delivered by Kevin Costner’s Jim Garrison, and in it, he breaks the fourth wall, staring down the barrel of the camera, and he delivers the film’s true message to us, saying, “Individual human beings have to create justice, and this is not easy because the truth often poses a threat to power and one often has to fight power at great risk to themselves… It’s up to you.” The film’s indictment on the military industrial complex and the impact of money on politics, both foreign and domestic, isn’t off in its assessment even if applying that to Kennedy’s assassination might be.

                Holding that message together is the cast, full of recognizable and familiar faces, all giving strong performance with some more noteworthy than others. Obviously, Costner does a fantastic job as the lead, compelling us to join him in his search for truth, even if his accent doesn’t always perfectly land within the Louisiana dialect he’s seeking to achieve. Tommy Lee Jones was the film’s lone acting nomination, and it makes sense, as he plays the diabolical and dubious villain that Garrison seeks as the first “card to fall” in the conspiracy to assassinate JFK. Jones’s portrayal of the closeted gay philanthropist with fascistic political leanings might feel a bit dated to a modern audience, but it’s certainly a strong example of the actor’s range of capabilities. For me, though, the supporting performances of Michael Rooker as the passionate, yet easily swayed, supporting lawyer and Gary Oldman as Lee Harvey Oswald give the film the gritty heart that it needs to keep its audience engaged. Rooker’s Bill Broussard feels like the realest character in the film, grounded in reality while hoping to find more because of how thin the ground of reality feels in this case. Meanwhile, Oldman plays the assassin/patsy without any sense of sympathy, seeking instead to portray him as the off-putting, antisocial individual that he was that would make for an easy scapegoat. All of these are powerful performances necessary to make the film work in the capacity that it does.

                Oliver Stone’s JFK is steeped in questionable conspiracy and a slew of harmonizations, but it wins the audience over with strong performances, solid technical work, and deeper themes that speak truth to the world that we currently live in, earning it a place alongside the greats. Not every aspect of the film’s more than three-hour runtime perfectly fit within the film, nor do they all feel perfectly necessary, but the accomplishment of the film itself and the questions that it contains make it worth at least one watch in your life. Currently, you can rent this film on most streaming platforms if you care to check it out.