It may be overlong, but it's still a masterpiece and a great history lesson

Rating: 10/10 (16 February 2020)

Despite JFK is considered a classic to this day and it has a very high score of 8,0 on IMDB I only saw this movie three months ago and I am glad I did it since I could see why it's highly praised to this day.
The movie is about Jim Garrison's (Kevin Costner) journey to find the truth about the Kennedy murder that happened on November 22, 1963. During the course of his investigations he comes across all the people that knew Lee Harvey Oswald (Gary Oldman) before the murder. After a long series of meetings, personal crisis with his family (since his wife thinks that he is more concerned in the Kennedy murder case than his family) and a long trial he still thinks that he hasn't found the truth yet.
I'll discuss what I liked about this movie. The acting is exceptional by everyone involved: Kevin Costner gives one of his best performances of his career and in my opinion he should have won the Academy Award for Best Actor. All the supporting roles are played by famous faces of those years: Michael Rooker and Wayne Knight play Jim Garrison's colleagues, Kevin Bacon steals the scene as a male prostitute that gives Garrison some shocking revelations about one of Oswald's friends with which he plotted the murder while in Cuba: Clay Shaw (Tommy Lee Jones), a Louisiana businessman that was subsequently acquitted after the trial; also Joe Pesci and Donald Sutherland give great scene-stealing performances. And in supporting roles, despite they don't share scenes together, Jack Lemmon (as a journalist) and Walter Matthau (as a senator).
The direction by Oliver Stone is very good and the cinematography is very slick and stylish. The soundtrack is among the best musical scores from 1990s movies (second only to SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION) and it will remain stuck in your memory even hours after you watch the movie. The script is very clever. As I wrote in the summary it may be a very long movie at 3 hours and 17 minutes but I accepted it since it's a movie based on a true story and the long running time was useful for letting the viewers (especially the ones interested in this historical period) know all the details.
In substance, this is a true masterpiece thanks to great cinematography, great direction and great acting by everyone and I would probably consider it Oliver Stone's best movie (second only to BORN ON THE FOURTH OF JULY). Truly a masterpiece that deserves all the praise and positive reviews and worth recommended.