The second greatest movie ever made

Rating: 10/10 (18 March 1999)

Most of what I had to say about this film has already been captured in other users' comments, some of which are excellent reviews. JFK struck me as being mostly about the virtues of truth, courage, and justice - about how precious truth is and how easy it is for people to cower away from it. Some of the dialogue was spectacular: 1. When Garrison is arguing against the theory that JFK was assassinated by the maffia; 2. When he battles with his wife over the importance of his work in order to make the country a better place in which his children can grow up; and 3. His presentation during the trial. When he kept running the tape over and over showing the president's head exploding, I broke down and cried. I couldn't believe that such an event could have been allowed to occur and how the investigation by the officials of one of the cruelest murders in history could have been so sloppily done.
Oliver Stone has been criticized for making an over-statement and for weaving fiction into the facts. I found the film "In the Name of the Father" as an appropriate example, unlike JFK, of "overstatement" - of how pedantic "shoving it down your throat" style weakens rather than strengthens the film's message. The fact that one of the most respected and loved world leaders in history was assassinated and no-one knows by whom and why makes it impossible to over-state the drama. I thought that Stone's "weaving in fiction" is poor criticism. In order to make the film interesting, you could not have the camera following Garrison's reading documents. Instead, you must have dialogue. So, Garrison meets the mysterious Mr. X played by Canadian actor Donald Sutherland. It is acceptable, to me, to have the methods in which facts were discovered fictitious as long as the facts themselves are real. And this is what Stone did.
The performances, direction, and editing of this spectacle were first rate and made the film intense to the fullest degree. I also liked the fact that the film focused on the greater issues, touching on other assassinations of the time - Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr.. Finally, the fact that the film featured an all-star cast soothed my heart. It was kind of like Hollywood was saying that this atrocity was such a disgrace, "we're getting our best people to make it known to the world". "JFK" is the second greatest movie ever made (right behind "Lorenzo's Oil"). (10 out of 10)