JFK (1991)

JFK  (1991)  ¢ ¢ ¢
    D: Oliver Stone
    Kevin Costner, Sissy Spacek, Kevin Bacon,
    Tommy Lee Jones, Laurie Metcalf, Gary Oldman,
    Michael Rooker, Donald Sutherland, Jack Lemmon,
    Ed Asner, Walter Matthau, Vincent D'Onofrio,
    Joe Pesci, Sally Kirkland, Brian Doyle-Murray
For a generation of kids who were in high school then or younger, the death of John F. Kennedy was the first defining historical event of our lives. We were shocked. Oliver Stone was one of those kids, too, and he leaves no conspiracy theory unturned in his dramatized speculation on what might've happened that day in Dallas in 1963. Kevin Costner plays New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison, who became obsessed with the assassination and kept the investigation going for years. What he came up with was inconclusive. That the Warren Commission's judgments are suspect doesn't come as a big surprise, and there's more than enough circumstantial evidence and shady behavior to make you wonder. But there's no solid proof of anything, either, which leaves Garrison at the end making his argument in court just to get it on the record in a case he knows he can't win. Maybe the truth will come out someday, when those secret files the government has locked up are finally released. But don't count on it. It's Costner who really carries this, and it's not hard to see earlier movie heroes in his performance. Sitting on a porch swing with his kids, he's Atticus Finch. Making his climactic plea in the courtroom, his voice cracking with emotion, he's Jefferson Smith. Donald Sutherland, playing this movie's equivalent of Deep Throat, pretty much owns the ten minutes he's in, and Gary Oldman could pass for a clone of Lee Harvey Oswald. In a final bit of casting irony, Garrison himself plays Earl Warren.