Invigorating retelling of a defining moment in history.

Rating: 10/10 (1 April 2001)

"JFK" was one of those films in my uncle's collection that he said I should watch, and initially, I wasn't very keen. After all, the film weighs in at about 3hrs and concerns a man I had never had much interest in. The impressive cast list almost swayed me numerous times, but I still deferred...
Then we were required to watch the opening segment as part of filmic analysis in a Media Studies class. Often, this provided an excuse to turn the brain off for a few minutes and look at the pretty pictures. I was unable to do that with "JFK". It got me uncomfortably but fascinatingly close to the action, something that Oliver Stone seems to have a knack for doing, judging by his previous movies that I've seen. I then borrowed the movie off my uncle, and now own a copy. The film makes the things you may have seen or heard previously about the assassination a thousand times more interesting. If you're in the fortunate position of ALREADY finding this stuff interesting, so much the better.
When I read the reviews posted on this site for various films, I do not immediately take them for the gospel truth. I like to judge things for myself. At the same time, I'm interested in other people's opinions, whether they align with or contradict my own. Surely the intelligent will realise that this is merely Oliver Stone's OPINION about what happened on that fateful day. He may be right, he may not, but the fact that some of it may be pure conjecture doesn't make it any less entertaining a film to watch.
Standouts in the cast are Lee Jones and Oldman. Lee Jones in particular delivers a performance that is at once delightfully camp, yet also eerily sinister. Oldman is as good as ever. The man cannot deliver a bad performance, even in horrid films (Romeo is Bleeding)
The music score is terrific at helping to convey the sense of being on the verge of a momentous breakthrough. It's also gratifying to see that Stone devotes a fair amount of time to documenting how the case affects Garrison's relationship with his family, rather than simply sticking to the bare bones of the investigation. True, it would have been a shorter film, but also much less interesting.
Stone is at his best when he has definite targets to aim for through his work. Where "Platoon" failed for me was that it conveyed the message that war is hell, but did so in a vague, lazy way. "Salvador", by contrast, took you right into the heart of the conflict and never let you forget the futility of it all. "JFK", I'm pleased to say, is closer in spirit to the latter because it stirs the emotions through the passion of the director. It made me care about an event I previously regarded as unimportant, because now I see the value of fighting for the truth to be revealed, whether it be Stone's version or otherwise.