Don DeLillo (who wrote a speculative account of Lee Harvey Oswald's life entitled Libra) called Oliver Stone's JFK "like Disneyland for conspiracy theorists."  And he was quite right.  If you are looking for an analysis of this film's accuracy (terrible), technical craft (honorable), and enjoyment (very high, for me), you'll have to look elsewhere on the site (go ahead, there's probably a couple hundred of them featuring such).

To say that this film is inaccurate and dishonest would be a concession that Stone attempted to be accurate and honest, something I'm not willing to do.  Whether he's inventing a confession from David Ferrie, presenting a disturbing homosexual free-for-all, or lying openly about any number of verifiable facts ("Kennedy was going to withdrawal from Vietnam!"  No, he sure wasn't.  "Oswald was a poor shot!"  His marksmanship record in the Marines says different.  Etc.) Stone has decided in advance that the truth should not get in the way of earnest speculation.

And thank zombie Jesus for that.  This film is incredibly entertaining and holds little truth outside of the fact that most of the characters are named after actual people.  Jim Garrison, the actual man and not Kevin Costner's portrayal of him, was and remains a seminal lunatic of the JFK-truther movement; not least of which because he was the only lawyer to ever bring charges against anyone for the murder.  In the movie, Garrison is a noble, whip-smart, open-minded prosecutor who slowly gets numbed out of complacency by inconsistencies within the case.  In reality, Garrison had a mangled logic in which he would decide what he wanted the facts to say and then bend the evidence to support his theories.  (Last I heard, he's convinced the fatal headshot in the assassination was delivered from someone hiding in the sewer grating at street level.)  He drugged and hypnotized potential witnesses (who were then fed lines to draw out the desired story), he hounded Clay Shaw for a crime that just about everyone but Garrison and some of his staff knew he was not guilty of, and he often thumbed his nose at the ethical boundaries of his position.  If you don't believe me, please do some research.  (Incidentally, Stone's research into the conspiracy angle of this movie seems to be entirely predicated on the idea that you will not research outside of the conspiracy subset.  In other words, "Let's only read what the people that agree with us have to say.")

The fact is, for every puzzling fact raised in the voluminous research on this subject, the nuttiness factor seems to produce a metric ton more words that fly in the face of reason.  And then it becomes a matter of speaking with such authority that the viewer accepts what you offer as the undisputed truth.  Stone uses this method unceasingly throughout the story, asserting things large and small, almost none of them having any basis in reality.

For me, the pivotal scene involves a mysterious former Pentagon officer (played ably by Donald Sutherland).  This is actually the key to the whole movie as the rest of the film posits a how-this-happened; this scene presents the why-this-happened.  It elevates the film to a higher level, to be honest.  The film is never dull or didactic (aside from the characterization of Garrison; Attickus Finch couldn't have even bought PR that good), but it also never puts things in perspective until this scene.  Sutherland's character presents a view from the inside of Kennedy's military-industrial complex and asserts that Kennedy planned to end the Cold War, and in so doing would rip hundreds of billions of dollars out of the hands of businessmen across the country ("The organizing principle of any society is for war").  And it was entirely necessary to explain how Garrison's investigation tied together the mafia, anti-Castro Cubans, the Secret Service, the military-industrial complex, the FBI, the Dallas police, and Lee Harvey Oswald (who is ironically presented as a pawn who did nothing wrong and even tried to prevent the assassination), actually had a purpose behind it.  It is a deftly handled scene (Stone is an absolutely great filmmaker and I will always give him credit for that.  He may be sneaky, underhanded, and deceptive to push his personal propaganda, but his skill as a filmmaker can't be doubted) that implores us to look at who benefits from Kennedy's assassination.  (In this logic, clearly Aristotle Onassis was behind it all.)  In the end, it is presented that there was not a single reason for the murder but dozens of them ranging from civil rights to Castro to the Cold War and many more.  That's not to say that any of these reasons were the precise cause, but it presented an environment in which Kennedy's death seems both logical and shocking depending on where you stand on the issues.

As the trial comes to a conclusion, Costner gives a staggering final summation for the jury.  In this speech, he points out that for the American people to accept Oswald as the sole assassin, we will be swallowing a pre-loaded deception and that we do so out of fear.  Suggesting that we can not deal with the enormity of a presidential assassination, with Oswald as the assassin we are abdicating our obligation to find the truth and have made this murder "the meaningless act of a loner". 

On the flipside of this argument (which is clearly the gold standard for the conspiracy theorists), there is a more rational reply that by elevating the assassination into a mythical realm in which Oswald couldn't possibly BE the lone assassin, you are presenting yourself with the same self-denial.  Rather than putting all faith in a lone gunman, you are now placing all faith in the conspiracy-from-impact. I understand how worrying it is to admit that maybe one person can wield such power over history, particularly if he's a nobody. 

So while I enjoy the hell out of Stone's film, I feel insulted by it in an equal amount.  He may not talk down to us non-believers, but he refuses to admit there's a middle ground, a large segment of the population that says "Maybe it was a conspiracy, maybe not.  I'm reserving judgement.  But I have faith that the organizations you are accusing work for the good of the nation and could not be responsible for this crime."  So while he argues his "It had to be a conspiracy" line, he's tacitly calling all those off his little reservation cowardly and delusional for not standing up to accept a self-evident truth about this fundamental event.  His tautology might actually have some gumption behind it if he didn't feel the need to invert, invent, bend, and otherwise manipulate fact and fiction to suit his own whims. 

Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: Good for a Rainy Day
Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 13 and Older