If You Like Conspiracy Theories...

Rating: 2/10 (17 December 2003)

And not the facts, you'll love this film. Stone borrows allegations from several prominent theorists and presents them as if they are unimpeachably true. He also makes up things of his own and throws them in, and you don't know who made up what. The problem, to me, is that this film is presented as a historical movie. You expect some errors and dramatic license in those, and those do exist. But Stone takes the time (3 hours) and style to make JFK seem like a carefully reconstructed docudrama, which it's not. The "100 Errors in JFK" page aside, there are numerous errors in logic made by Stone, and the fictions stand next to the facts.
That's my big problem with the film: not that it pushes theories that are totally false, which it does, but that it relies on the ignorance of its audience to get by. If conspiracy theories weren't so much more popular than the truth, I think a lot of people would have been unable to stomach the way Stone attacks dead people who are innocent but unable to defend themselves, like Clay Shaw and David Ferrie. I found myself disgusted by the way they were treated in the film. They're not fictional characters, they were real people, and Stone is making a buck off the fact that millions of people have been fooled into thinking they murdered John F. Kennedy. Most of that fooling was done by Jim Garrison and his whacko crusade, and by guys like Fletcher Prouty, who were heavily involved with the film. Garrison isn't a hero, and he doesn't deserve the treatment he gets either. I wish I could evaluate the film more on its own merits- it's dramatic, if overlong. I enjoyed Donald Sutherland's scenes despite my disagreement with their point. As a film, it's a mixed bag, with some strong points and some weak ones. As history, it's worse than bad, it's outright dishonest.