Cinematic Filth

Rating: Null/10 (14 April 1999)

"JFK" is like "Triumph Of The Will" a technically brilliant film pushing a subject that is pure historical filth.
I note with amusement how some of the people in this forum who praise this film say things like "if only half of what Stone says is true it's frightening". Actually, any historian will tell you that if half of what someone says can be proved false that ought to tell you something about how one should regard the other half. Because when it comes to the techniques that Stone uses, the factual record exposes him, not the Warren Commission as the real liar.
We start with Jim Garrison, who in real life was nothing like Kevin Costner and whose vicious vendetta against an innocent man, Clay Shaw makes even the rational believers of a conspiracy shun him to this day. Viewers of "JFK" may also be interested to know that the real life "Colonel X" is a man named L. Fletcher Prouty, who in real life is associated with Lyndon LaRouche's kook organizations. Then there is the fact that Stone deliberately ignores the existence of ten eyewitnesses who saw Oswald kill Police Officer Tippit, and how Stone also made up a star witness (Kevin Bacon) who never existed because Garrison's real-life star witness Perry Russo (who ironically has a cameo in the film) was exposed as a crackpot. And the list is endless.
Finally, let's consider the laughable premise Stone puts forth. That a "right wing conspiracy" murdered a fiscally conservative centrist Democrat who was a dogged advocate of the Cold War just to make Lyndon Johnson, the man who gave us the Great Society and the Civil Rights Act president? Stone is so out of touch with the political situation as it existed in 1963 that it's frightening to think that people would use his film as an introductary primer for recent history.
About the only redeeming feature of this movie is John Williams' score (which I often have fun with by making up pro-Warren Commission lyrics to the title melody)