Director: Oliver Stone
Entertainment grade: B
History grade: Fail
On 22 November 1963, American president John F Kennedy was shot and killed as he drove through Dallas, Texas. The Warren Commission, charged with investigating the assassination, concluded that he was murdered by Lee Harvey Oswald, acting alone.
Truth
The film opens with a documentary montage, presenting Kennedy (very questionably) as a radical progressive who upset the establishment and therefore found himself on the road to assassination. This is mixed in with recreated fictional footage, and segues into the movie itself without distinction – making a discreet but definite claim for documentary-level accuracy. Our hero is New Orleans district attorney Jim Garrison – who, in another subtle bid for trustworthiness, is played by 1991's biggest mainstream Hollywood star, Kevin Costner. There's no doubt about it: Oliver Stone wants you to believe this is the truth. Many do. Between two-thirds and three-quarters of Americans believe there was a conspiracy behind John F Kennedy's murder – a belief which, pollsters Gallup noted, was sustained by this movie.
The film's case
Nagged by fears that shady characters in his own district might have been involved in the president's assassination, Garrison puts together a case. He has three key witnesses. David Ferrie (Joe Pesci) is a mercenary working with anti-Castro Cuban exiles. He breaks down and confesses the entire plot to Garrison, complete with CIA and Cuban exile involvement. Immediately afterwards, he is murdered by his co-conspirators. Willie O'Keefe (Kevin Bacon) is a gay prostitute involved with the conspirators. He, too, confesses the whole plot to Garrison, exactly in line with Ferrie. Finally, Garrison goes to Washington to meet an unnamed government insider, X, played with unabashed brilliance by Donald Sutherland. In a coruscating monologue, X explains the full breadth and depth of the conspiracy, bringing in the entire military-industrial complex behind the American government.
The real case
On the strength of this evidence, the case for a conspiracy would appear overwhelming. There's just one problem: it's all wrong. David Ferrie was a real person, but always maintained his innocence. His big plot confession scene is a figment of the film-makers' imaginations. Were he alive, it would constitute a massive libel. Ferrie died of natural causes – a coroner's verdict which the real Garrison, as district attorney, would have been ideally placed to challenge, had he seen any suggestion of foul play. He did not challenge it. The movie's X is fictional, based loosely on air force colonel L Fletcher Prouty, who was not part of Garrison's investigation but did serve as a technical adviser on this movie. Prouty's credibility was demolished in a critique of JFK by investigative journalist Edward Jay Epstein. The mega-conspiracy to which X alludes is drawn from a famous spoof, The Report from Iron Mountain, published in 1967 and revealed in 1972 by its author to have been a hoax.
That leaves the case hinging on Willie O'Keefe – another fictional character. In reality, Garrison's equivalent key witness was Perry Russo, a heterosexual insurance salesman. Russo's testimony was not particularly lively until Garrison administered a dubious "truth serum" of sodium pentothal – known to make people suggestible – and subjected him to questioning under hypnosis. At that point, Russo "remembered" all sorts of wacky things. In the movie, Garrison is conspicuously not shown jacking his witness up on barbiturates or hypnotising him. Because that would make his case look like a shoddy pile of incoherent fantasies wrung out of vulnerable people by suspect means.
Ballistics
The film's stirring finale is a splendidly enacted courtroom scene, during which Garrison pulls apart the case for a lone gunman on grounds of what he calls the "magic bullet theory" – demonstrating that the bullet which the Warren Commission claims killed Kennedy and injured Texas governor John Connally performed all sorts of unlikely twists, turns and pauses in mid-air. Again, the evidence in the film seems overwhelming. Again, that's because it's just not true. Garrison's onscreen case is based on a partial selection of flawed reconstructions. One example is the film's allegation that this bullet changed direction to move upwards as it passed through Kennedy's neck. This comes from an analysis of the bullet hole in the back of his jacket. In fact, a photograph taken three seconds before the assassination shows Kennedy's jacket rucked up above his shoulders. Once you take that into account, it looks like the bullet's trajectory continued normally downwards and was consistent with a shot from the book depository. The only thing dodging around like a magic bullet here is the movie itself, veering erratically between misconceptions and outright lies in a determined effort to avoid the facts.
Verdict
JFK is a cleverly constructed, tightly written and sometimes breathtakingly well-acted movie – and one of the most appalling travesties of history you're ever likely to see.
