One Man's Search For Truth Against Overwhelming Power

Rating: 9/10 (29 November 2012)

It's late 2012 and with that there is a certain kind of luxury one has when reviewing a film that when released seemed largely sensational, perhaps even an extreme weaving of more fiction than fact.
As the years passed from 1963 to this depiction of Clay Shaw's trial (in 1969) it still was an accepted fact that Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone assailant of President John F. Kennedy, thus the hard-to-swallow claim the accused was part of a larger conspiracy birthed in the blackest operations of the U.S. government by certain benefactors. However, by the late eighties their was a definite turn of the tide with a large number of Americans finding the "lone assassin" with the "magic bullet" theory patently ludicrous. Enter Oliver Stone, a man impassioned by another man's lone crusade for the truth regarding one of America's darkest hours (The Civil War being the darkest and this being next along with 911). This picture was a tremendous gamble which shows the director's own brand of courageous patriotism.
The above said, this is a film first about Jim Garrison, the fearless D.A. of New Orleans Louisiana. Garrison was to possessed to the point of obsession which cost him dearly personally. He ended up almost wrecking his family life for years and even depleting his own personal savings in his single-minded pursuit for justice to be served in what he believed was the highest act of treason: the conspiracy to kill J.F.K.. Stone goes about giving us Jim Garrison in a very realistic, if sympathetic way. One can not fault this because now, over 40-years removed from Garrison's prosecution of Clay Shaw, the mountain of known evidence is more vindicating related to Garrison than ever. It will likely continue to be more so even as those directly involved are largely deceased.
The story of Jim Garrison is fascinating. Garrison had the back-bone to do what no one else either would or could. Kevin Costner gives a superlative performance all-around in his depiction of an lowly local elected official attempting to take on the world's greatest concentration of power. It is only due to his extremely high-profile that he likely survived and the danger of his possible assassination builds throughout the film as M.L.K. and R.F.K. are also murdered. Stone has reverence for the quest and takes it seriously. Though the movie is long, and some would say slow, I find it fastidious in detail and never boring. In other words it is truly moving that a man "without a dog in the hunt" would hang himself so far over the line in his quest for the unthinkable. The viewer both roots for Garrison and cringes at how he is kept from securing valuable documents as well as many witnesses (like the obviously knowledgeable "Mr. X"). One must feel pain for Garrison as even the trial's supposedly neutral judge is openly hostile (what a waste of humanity whoever this low-life of an empowered official was in real life).
This movie is exactly what President Eisenhower warned Americans of so take it that way and do a comprehensive research of your own. You will end up validating so much of what the movie presents that you will be much more open to the larger picture of what both Garrison and Stone extrapolated. No, it may not be 100 accurate, but if it isn't the errors are forgivable with obstruction at the highest level preventing a clearer picture. That is the power of this movie because it literally forces the viewer to think and pushes one toward more investigation (it actually did force the government to release a quantity of previously sequestered, yet still highly vetted, information as well as calling out the Warren Commission Report as fiction). It is a wake-up call because we still are largely victims of government by the few in this post 911 world.
I applaud Oliver Stone for bringing Jim Garrison's story so effectively to the masses. I am glad that not only was it surprisingly successful upon release, but that it has continued to be seen by millions more each year some twenty plus years later. Two things should be mandatory for all U.S. citizens: read The Constitution and see this movie, 'nuff said!