Great thriller and political commentary

Rating: 9/10 (11 April 2005)

Above all, this is a great thriller, so you can always watch it from that perspective and enjoy it. And the superb cast - especially Lemon, Bacon, and Sutherland (Donald, not the CTU scion - if Jack Bauer had been around in 1963, maybe history would have been different) - keep the intensity level going. As for the politics, I think there's a lot to recommend it, especially if one applies the Discomfort Litmus Test, i.e., just note how many howls of outrage and dismissive splutterings were aimed at Stone and the movie. It touched a chord. "JFK" has been unfairly painted as a conspiracy nut's fantasy. But Stone was making a movie, not a documentary - although heaven knows there's enough material out there in real life to make Stone's movie seem pallid. I believe that Stone's purpose was to show how smoothly and competently an assassination of the president could be carried out by the powers that be, how they could simply view it as a necessary step in advancing their own interests, and how expendable any individual is in the scheme of power politics. Stone certainly used a lot of material that is fairly well vouched for, and if he fictionalized the meetings at the upper levels of government, he was really saying, "This is how it could have happened. It may not have been the same people as I'm showing, but if not them, then others. If you look at the evidence, it could have been something like this." Viewed through that lens, "JFK" is a provocative thriller that should be seen in a double feature with "The Parallax View", which also dissects the mechanics of conspiracy and presents it as "business as usual" for those who deal in that currency.