As someone fascinated by the Kennedy assassination, it is a must that I review the two feature films that have attempted to deal with the intricate and fascinating details of this subject: The Oliver Stone spectacular JFK, and the little know 1970’s B-film Executive Action.
Once you conclude from the raw evidence that it must have been a conspiracy of some sort, basically you have to start looking at the dimensions and features of the conspiracy and try to make out the shadowy outlines of what actually happened and why. Each of these two films does just this, putting forth a possible scenario commensurate with the facts of the case.
Oliver Stone’s JFK is based mostly on Jim Garrison’s “On the Trail of the Assassins.” I feel that within this book is the ultimate 70’s-style political detective movie. Think All the President’s Men, only way more complex and mysterious. With the material in this book it could have been the high water mark in the genera. If only we had an Alan J Pakula (in his prime) to tackle this topic, instead of that hack Oliver Stone – it would take real film-making genius and guts to approach this film in the style of All the President’s Men.
But unfortunately, Oliver Stone tackled it, which is not all bad – at least he brought the story to the attention of the general public.
The structural skeleton of the Garrison story is so strong that Stone really can’t screw it up too badly (although he tries,) and this in itself makes JFK a film worth watching. The pacing of information to the viewer is not very good, but the information is so cool and interesting that it does not really matter too much. The film is openly manipulative, and is rather heavy handed about it, and while this is good from the point of view of helping viewers grasp the complexity of the case, and convince them that it is not so far fetched to think there might have been a conspiracy, it also renders the film much less effective as a detective story then it might have been. But that’s just the price it pays, because Oliver Stone clearly feels that people need to be bashed over the head with this stuff, and maybe he is right.
Casting in the film is, in a word, tragic. Costner’s performance is painfully bad. It is painful just to look at him trying to act. (He’s only good in the scene where he’s being a jerk to his wife.) Even in the court room scenes, where one is tempted to say “for Kevin Costner, that’s not too bad,” the sad fact is that on reflection it really is that bad! They needed a real actor for this role – Donald Sutherland might have been able to pull it off.
As far as Garrison’s investigative team goes, Jay O. Sanders and Michael Rooker are okay given the pitiful material they have to work with. The rest are dreadful, simply dreadful. They are not even visually believable as assistants. I mean, that guy Newman from Seinfeld? Who could ever take him seriously as an actor? But there he is, as an assistant DA!
The performances of Joe Pesci, Kevin Bacon and Tommy Lee Jones (looking like they taped bleached Brillo pads to his head) range from barely passable to laughably bad.
Stone makes a valiant attempt to re-create the brainstorming sessions that Garrison and his team conducted, but it must be said that he (for the most part) fails. Occasionally he succeeds in capturing a spontaneous sounding moment in the discussions, but generally they sound very stilted and scripted, and I think they really exist to provide narration for the Oliver Stone flashback scenes the audience sees as the team is talking.
Also, WAAAAAAY to many cringing moments with Garrison’s family.
Now, the good things:
Gary Oldham is, I think, really fabulous as Oswald. Really, really fabulous. And the writing of the “Mr. X” sequence (as well as Donald Sutherland’s acting of it) is superb and quite thrilling. Oldham and Sutherland show what real actors can do with this material.
The court room scenes are botched pretty badly – they are not even very true to what actually happened in real life during that trial, a fact which I simply do not understand because their actual case was much stronger than they made it appear in the movie. But there is one exception: the sequence where Garrison plays and analyzes the Zapruder film and then takes us through Oswald’s supposed movements and illustrates the absurdity of the Warren Report is really exciting, interesting and well done.
So, what should they have done with this film? Here’s a list of basic ideas to start with:
- Stick to Garrison’s book. As a screenplay outline, On The Trail of the Assassins reads way better than the adapted screenplay they wound up with. And the actual characters are way more interesting and cinematic than the amalgamized characters they created out of them. Plus there was tons of fascinating and very cinematic stuff that happened in the course of the investigation that Stone simply ignored.
- Cast someone really good as Garrison. All the rest should have been cast with good anonymous character actors.
- Tell more of story in dialog between characters with fewer flashbacks. For this you need a first-rate script writer.
- Get rid of all the cringing shit with Garrison’s family.
- Get a different director, one who understands subtlety, nuance and the importance of incidental acting in a film like this.
It could have been so great …
Executive Action is based on Rush to Judgment, Mark Lane’s landmark criticism of the Warren Commission, and in fact was written (the story outline, anyway) by Mark Lane himself. It presents a much more limited picture of the assassination, and does so from the point of view of the (hypothetical) plotters.
Executive Action is like the “anti-JFK.” It is almost self-consciously low-key. It opens with a bunch of mysterious executive-types sitting around a mansion talking about Kennedy and the need to get rid of him.They appear to be politically-connected tycoons of some sort. None of them has anything to do with the intelligence community; this film was made way before all the evidence of the CIA’s involvement came out in the HSCA investigation and subsequently.
Unlike JFK, the story is told mostly through dialog, but the quality of the dialog varies. The all important setup scenes in the beginning are pretty well done, however, and this actually sustains the film (as this kind of strong start usually does.) The fact that the plotters are so anonymous is problematic because you can’t understand the motivations for their actions or even the methods they use to get things done. Someone says – “The parade must go through Dealey Plaza,” and someone else says “It’s no problem, I’ll make it happen.” Yet we don’t know who this second person is really, and how he can make it happen so easily or if it is even easy for him. It’s fine as far as it goes, but in the end it is just not great film making.
The film is very low budget, but is it amazing how well it is able to cover a large amount of material that is covered so frenetically in JFK. I found the film really enjoyable.
The casting and acting of the plotters is quite good, and Burt Lancaster is always fun to watch. The other incidental actors, including Oswald and the Oswald impersonator, are rock-bottom. But at least the people we spend the most time listening to can really deliver their lines.
On last gripe. The main theme in the score is not bad. However, there is one part of the score that, if I remember correctly, sounds like a sing-song version of This Land is Your Land. It is hideous, and it is the music they chose to play in the climax scene. A really unfortunate choice – almost wrecks the whole thing.
My advice is: see them both, and the read “On the Trail of the Assassins” By Jim Garrison, and “The Last Investigation” By Gaeton Fonzi. If these two books don’t make you a Kenneday Assassination enthusiast, nothng will!
Irreviews 