The military-industrial complex

Rating: 8/10 (17 March 2007)

Eisenhower warned us about the military-industrial complex. It was not well know at the time of Kennedy's presidency. Oliver Stone presents a long and confusing argument that it was behind Kennedy's assassination. The film show Keven Costner as Jim Garrson battling the US Government and it's cronies: the ultra-right-wing fanatics represented in the movie by Clay Shaw (Tommy Lee Jones), some unidentified Cuban exiles and a former F.B.I. man named Guy Bannister (Ed Asner). Also involved are various fringe types like David Ferrie (Joe Pesci), a pilot for hire; the small-time mobster Jack Ruby (Brian Doyle Murray), and Oswald (Gary Oldman), whose place in the conspiracy has become utterly mysterious by the time the movie ends.
Garrison would have had an easier time convincing a jury today as the Iraq war is the very embodiment of the military-industrial complex. WhatStone suggests was behind Kennedy's death is business-as-usual in Washington. We start wars to sell bombs.
It was unfortunate that Stone's film came up against The Silence of the Lambs, which cleared the table at the Academy Awards. He took home two, but lost four times that many. It was a great film to go back and see. It was a reminder of a different age. An age when the Judge, the lawyers, and the defendants sat there cooling smoking as the trial went on. Bizarre.