JFK [Blu-ray]

Oliver Stone's JFK is based in part on On the Trail of the Assassins by Jim Garrison, which should be warning enough that the facts will not get in the way of a good story. The film centers upon the 1967 attempt by New Orleans DA Garrison (played by Kevin Costner) to prosecute prominent businessman Clay Shaw (Tommy Lee Jones) for complicity in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Most of the "facts" presented in the film--the opening-scene gangland hit of Rose Cheramie (Sally Kirkland), the connection between Ruby (Brian Doyle-Murray) and Oswald (Gary Oldman), the governmental interference during the autopsy, the "planted" bullet--are really nothing more than the familiar shaky theories that have been trotted out by conspiracy buffs for the past three decades. What Stone has done is to make a compendium of everyone of these theories (a dramatic device previously attempted in the TV movie The Trial of Lee Harvey Oswald), then to give them credence through the power of cinematic persuasion. He also contrives (brilliantly, it must be admitted) to make Garrison's inevitable courtroom defeat seem like a moral victory. Subtlety is studiously avoided throughout the film, from the "casual" implication that self-styled witness David Ferrie's (Joe Pesci) suicide was nothing of the kind, to the inclusion of a convenient "deep throat" government agent (Donald Sutherland) who, standing just outside the Lincoln Memorial, verbally provides Garrison with all the damning evidence that he needs--with the promise that he'll deny everything if brought to court. Possibly Stone's most remarkable achievement is making Jim Garrison appear to be a stable, totally reliable and scrupulously honest human being; a brief shot of the real Garrison, feverishly playing a cameo role as a wild-eyed Earl Warren, rather undercuts Stone's deification of the man. Our favorite scene: After warning the public that the conspirators won't be satisfied merely with JFK's blood, Garrison witnesses live TV coverage of Robert Kennedy's assassination (there wasn't any); he tells his wife (Sissy Spacek) of the event, whereupon she cries "Oh, my God! You were right!" Nominated for several Oscars, JFK won awards for best photography (Robert Richardson) and editing (Joe Husching, Pietro Scalia).