JFK

BACK COVER SYNOPSIS: Oliver Stone's powerful film about the shots heard round the world and the mystery enshrouding them is one of the most provocative movies of our time. Beside its box-office success, critical acclaim and awards, it played a major role in the national debate leading to passage of the 1992 Assassination Material Disclosure Act. This remastered two-disc DVD edition feature the Academy Award winning film with 17 added minutes (Disc A) and compelling extra features (Disc B) that enrich the mosaic of the turbulent investigation of President John F. Kennedy's 1963 assassination by Jim Garrison (Kevin Costner).

FILM REVIEW: The assassination of President Kennedy on November 22, 1963 has to be the most enduring, controversial and riveting who-dun-it mysteries of our time. We were told that one man alone, Lee Harvey Oswald, shot the President. Case closed, let's get on with life. But massive, glaring inconsistencies among eye-witness accounts and even obvious forensic evidence to the contrary pointed to a wide conspiracy which has fuelled much speculation and debate ever since that tragic day. Oliver Stone's "JFK" fleshes out a number of the conspiracy theories and does it with such riveting analyses and intelligence that you come out wanting to see more - the film is over three hours long and Stone barely scratches the surface of what may have happened! No matter which theory you choose to follow, or even if you don't, Stone makes an irrefutable case based on common sense and available evidence that Oswald not only wasn't the main perpetrator of the assassination, but that he may not even have fired a gun on that day. "JFK" is a great film that will open your eyes to one of the most terrible moments in the history of the United States.
The film opens with a prologue detailing the history of Kennedy's presidency and the background forces at work when he came to power. As narrated by Martin Sheen, the prologue offers a backstory which sets up the idea that Kennedy was on a collision course with the Establishment, a power-hungry military industrial complex wanting to further his agenda and profits with its war policies. We then see the aftermath of the assassination as people learn of this extraordinary event on news-casts. What's great about this sequence is that it appears to capture the heart-stopping moment when you realised what just happened; that it's almost unbelievable. The story then picks up three years later and New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison, after a fateful chat with a Senator on a flight to Washington, decides to re-open the case into Kennedy's assassination, and in doing so, literally enters Wonderland where 'white is black and black is white'. The film provides sequence after sequence of analyses and evidence that are so compelling that you would never want to look at the official version of history again. If nothing else, two points made the 'Oswald' theory impossible; first, it was physically impossible to do the shooting job Oswald did in the six seconds he had to do it, and second, one bullet could never turn left and right, pause in mid-air and do other miraculous things to hit two people seven times. The latter, the 'magic-bullet theory', is the foundation of the case in official history and when you start taking that apart, their whole case falls apart which is why this film makes for such compelling viewing.
Kevin Costner is spot on in this film as Jim Garrison; you can tell that whenever he passionately cares about whatever material he's working on it shows in his performance. Some have criticised his oft-wooden acting style and that may be fair in other films but he's very good in "JFK". Through him we can get a sense of the anger the public would feel over the idea that their government took power away from them that day by replacing their leader with one who would work with the Establishment. Costner is supported by a great supporting cast of stars, including Tommy Lee Jones, Kevin Bacon, Joe Pesci, Sissy Spacek, Gary Oldman and a host of others. Pesci in particular is quite effective as the neurotic David Ferrie who gives the great line, "the f**king shooters don't even know!". But perhaps the most riveting is Donald Sutherland's character "X" who spends twenty minutes in the film giving Garrison an overview of his work in the military and how the assassination was most likely executed from the perspective of his inside knowledge.
The technical aspects to this film are worth mentioning as well - for its time this film is quite fast-paced, with a lot of quick intercutting between different film stocks to give a more documentary/investigative account of the story. On this alone the film deserves credit as its intercutting of staged and real footage is remarkable. In particular, the sequence where Garrison goes through the Zapruder film (the only visual evidence of the assassination) frame by frame to show how the actual bullets hit the targets are completely inconsistent with the official version of history. John Williams' score also deserves mention; he's spot on again in this film, expertly highlighting the moods of both tragedy and conspiracy.
An excellent film that will keep you riveted to your seat watching right until the very end.

TECHNICAL REVIEW: This film has an excellent transfer, even with the integration of archival footage and staged footage shot on lesser film stocks. The video is sharp and crisp in the main scenes, and the lower grade footage looks just as good. The soundtrack is very effective, even though the bulk of the film is dialogue driven. Overall, an excellent transfer.

EXTRAS REVIEW: The extra features on this disc are okay but nothing special. We get two video supplements which include an interview with the real Mr X and an analysis of declassified government documents. They're interesting but make for some dry viewing. There's some web content with two multimedia essays, and there's also a number of deleted scenes with commentary from Oliver Stone. What is dissapointing is a lack of a making-of documentary, and as such, we have to rely on the audio commentary on the feature disc by Oliver Stone to gain some insight in to the production. This commentary is excellent, but a documentary with cast and crew interviews and other material would have also been welcome.

BOTTOM LINE: Worth having in the collection.

FILM RATING: 9/10 -- EXTRAS RATING: 6/10 -- OVERALL DVD RATING: 8.5/10 

Todd Murphy <br />
http://www.allaboutmovies.net