As a film, OK. As serious analysis a tad dodgy. Always remember that this is fiction

Rating: 7/10 (28 May 2011)

There's the truth about why John Kennedy was assassinated and by whom and then there's Oliver Stone's epic JFK. It is generally, although not universally, accepted that Lee Harvey Oswald was indeed a 'patsy' and set up to take the wrap, and that the Warren Commission and its report were a rather hamfisted whitewash. But that is about all we can safely allow ourselves to believe to know, and everything else is still as clear as mud. The problem with Stone's JFK is that it is first and foremost a fiction, with fictional elements which, although intended to demonstrate a higher 'dramatic' truth, are still made up, invented, constructed. For all I know the thesis of the film is wholly accurate (although one website in particular has dedicated itself to debunking much of Stone's film). On the other hand it might well be wholly inaccurate, and it doesn't seem that we will be able to know definitively one way or the other any time soon. But when considering Stone's film JFK, the one thing we must never forget is that it is a fiction and furthermore, given the nature of Hollywood filmmaking, one produced for commercial gain. So, for example, it includes several wholly fictional characters, of which the gay hustler Willie O'Keeffe and the assistant DA Bill Bruissard are just two and severa wholly fictional scenes.
Yet many people – in fact, a great many people – will have walked out of the cinema after watching JFK believing that the Kennedy murder mystery has finally been solved, that the conspiracy was, in the words of the film's DA Jim Garrison, nothing less than a coup d'etat backed by the military industrial complex of the US which saw Kennedy as bad for business. According to Stone's film that coup d'etat and the assassination conspiracy were achieved with the backing of the CIA, the FBI and Dallas' police department. And, what is even more alarming is that, given the potency of film, Stone's – fictional - account might well in time become the accepted and definitive account. But I'll repeat: we have no way of knowing how much or how little of it is true or even close to true.
By chance I have been reading another analysis of the assassination by the British writer Anthony Summers (and was thus already familiar with many of the names of the whole affair's protagonists). Summer's book is not a work of fiction but attempts to sift through the confusion of fact and evidence surrounding Oswald. Although Summers is at pains to avoid being seen to 'solve the case' and states that his objective is simply to lay out the evidence as we know it, his book does suggest strongly that there was Mafia involvement in Kennedy's murder and, even more so that, of anti-Castro Cuban exiles. In this writer's view, assassination by Cuban exiles with the assistance of the Mafia (who hated Kennedy and his brother Robert) and rather a lot of rogue elements in the CIA and FBI, strikes me as being a great deal more plausible than the man being bumped of by his own side, not least of whom was the man who succeeded Kennedy as president (and who apparently reversed Kennedy's policy to pull out of Vietnam and instead escalated US involvement in the conflict. Yet that, very plausible and well-documented aspect of the assassination is not even hinted at in Stone's film. There is not a whisper of Cuban exiles, despite Oswald's well-known dealings with them. Summers agrees that there was a great deal of very odd CIA, FBI and Dallas police department behaviour, but does not suggest that this was official policy (rather, he believes that official stubbornness which covered up a great deal of odd behaviour by the security forces stemmed from a proud esprit de corps, my side right or wrong) at no point does anything he writes suggest that a coup d'etat lay at the core of the assassination.
That, on the other hand, lies at the heart of Stone's film, and the meeting between Garrison and the mysterious Mr X (a disillusioned high-up soldier who claimed he ran a black ops unit) is pivotal. So what is it? Who's right? Your guess is as good as mine. But don't take Stone's film as the gospel truth. If you decide to see it (by now most probably in DVD) always bear in mind that this is a fictional work of art, and that Stone is on record as having his own agenda.
But what of JFK as a film? Well, if it is possible to divorce the 'film' from its contentious subject matter – which is, of course, almost impossible – then JFK should get very good marks indeed. It is well-shot, well-acted, well-edited and well-imagined. Had it dealt with some other assassination, and one which was not as central to a sensitive American psyche, it would be top-notch. As it is  well until and when JFK can be views with a little more objectivity, it is almost impossible to judge.
Remember: this is a fictional piece of art. It isn't The Truth, irrespective of how close or how far from The Truth it actually might be.