Occam's Razor and Oliver Stone

Rating: Null/10 (19 November 2003)

"JFK" has been controversial from the moment of its inception. Its director, Oliver Stone, has been reviled as a revisionist and heralded as a visionary.

The film "JFK" seeks to vindicate Jim Garrison, the former DA of New Orleans, who wholeheartedly believed a conspiracy existed to kill President Kennedy, and to shut up anyone who came too close to "the truth".
If we could slake off all these years since 1963, or even 1991, we would see how drastically the average person's view has changed. The vast majority now believe that Kennedy's killing was the result of a conspiracy. Many think Oswald was framed, and some even think there were two or more guys answering to the name of Oswald.
"JFK" has taken on an aura of "fact" to so many that passions can be aroused if one voices a dissenting opinion in the wrong company. Not a lot of films have had the kind of impact. On the bonus side, the film JFK helped to get documents released which would have been kept from the public for 75 years after the assassination. These documents, a veritable mountain of them, are available to the public in varying degrees.
In 1991 things seemed more black and white.
Did I believe in a conspiracy then? It is hard to recall. Do I believe in one now? Yes. I believe that a conspiracy exists, on the Internet, in books and in the media, to present such an information overload that "we" allow the "experts" to feed us their Cliff Notes version of the 1963 events. They eat, digest, and we swallow.
The web's minutia of everything Kennedy is mind boggling. Every point has a counterpoint. Every truth has a lie. Every ass gets to bray, and we are left to sort it out. You must make up your own mind on this movie and on the events that spawned it. For my part, the jury is still out. I tend to follow Occam's Razor, but research for this review has left me battered and reeling, and just as confused as anybody.