A bad high school term paper

Rating: 5/10 (22 November 2004)

The problem with this film is that while Oliver Stone continually ducks behind the curtain defending himself that he was only making a work of fiction, he uses enough historical imagery and data that the end product is as I have described it in the "one line description:" a bad history term paper.
I'll not recount the historical inaccuracies that permeate the film concerning the individuals involved save to note that attempting to make a hero of Jim Garrison would be laughable if the reputations otherwise damaged in the film did not belong to real people. I would encourage anyone who believes that the character Kevin Costner portrayed bore any philosophical or intellectual similarity to Jim Garrison should read a biography of Garrison some time. he knew he had no case, he knew his "star witness" was perjuring himself. but the call to glory was too great for Garrison to let those "little inconveniences" get in his way.
The real life Jim Garrison ultimately lost his case against Clay Shaw and Stone loses his case as well by attempting to glue together a variety of conspiracy theories, many of which had been debunked long before the release of the film in 1991. The problem, however, is that those theories are presented in "JFK" as historical verities, and large numbers of viewers haven't the historical grounding in the facts of the assassination and the scores of investigations conducted since to know where Stone is taking "artistic license" and the actual facts of the case. The result is that actual people end up being smeared by innuendo and "factual evidence" long since discredited.