JFK (1991)

Director:

Oliver Stone

Writers (WGA):

Oliver Stone (screenplay) &
Zachary Sklar (screenplay) ...

Release Date:

20 December 1991 (USA)

Genre:

Biography | Crime | Drama | History | Mystery | Thriller

Tagline:

The Story That Won't Go Away

Plot:

A New Orleans DA discovers there's more to the Kennedy assassination than the official story.

Plot Keywords:

Kennedy | President | John F Kennedy | Assassination Of President | Vietnam

Awards:

Won 2 Oscars. Another 10 wins & 20 nominations

Cast

Sally Kirkland	...	Rose Cheramie
Anthony Ramirez	...	Epileptic
Ray LePere	...	Zapruder
Steve Reed	...	John F. Kennedy - Double
Jodie Farber	...	Jackie Kennedy - Double (as Jodi Farber)
Columbia Dubose	...	Nellie Connally - Double
Randy Means	...	Gov. Connally - Double
Kevin Costner	...	Jim Garrison
Jay O. Sanders	...	Lou Ivon
E.J. Morris	...	Plaza Witness #1
Cheryl Penland	...	Plaza Witness #2
Jim Gough	...	Plaza Witness #3
Perry R. Russo	...	Angry Bar Patron
Mike Longman	...	TV Newsman #1
Edward Asner	...	Guy Bannister

Also Known As:

JFK (France)
JFK - Affaire non classée (France) (poster title)
Project X (USA) (working title)

MPAA:

Rated R for language. (also 1992 edited version)

Runtime:

189 min | USA:206 min (director's cut)

Country:

USA | France

Language:

English

Colour:

Black and White | Colour

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Sound Mix:

Dolby SR

Certification:

Finland:K-12 | Canada:13+ (Quebec) | Canada:A (Nova Scotia) | Canada:AA (Ontario) | Canada:PG (Manitoba) (TV rating) | Iceland:12 | Brazil:14 | Singapore:NC-16 (re-rating) | Singapore:PG (original rating) (cut) | Argentina:13 | Australia:M | Chile:14 | Finland:K-11 (DVD rating) | Germany:12 (bw) | Netherlands:12 | Norway:11 | South Korea:15 | Spain:13 | Sweden:11 | UK:15 | USA:R (No. 31561)

Filming Locations:

Arlington National Cemetery, Arlington, Virginia, USA

Company:

Warner Bros. Pictures

Trivia:

The real Jim Garrison never made the speech that Costner makes at the end of the movie. It was taken from several speeches the he gave and some of it from his book.

Goofs:

Anachronisms: Scenes showing the railroad yard behind the wood fence show railroad cars painted and lettered for railroads that did not exist in 1963.

Quotes:

Lee Bowers: At the time of the shooting there seemed to be some commotion... I just am unable to describe - a flash of light or smoke or something which caused me to feel that something out of the ordinary had occurred there on the embankment...

Movie Connections:

Spoofed in "The Simpsons: Whacking Day (#4.20)" (1993)

Soundtrack:

Eternal Father, Strong To Save

This is how it happened

JFK is the best political assassination conspiracy thriller ever made! It's a visually striking, documentary like movie with heart-throbbing pace, and bravura acting with story based on nothing but hard facts. It was striking that polls conducted from 1966 on show that as many as 80% of the American public hold beliefs contrary to the findings of the Warren commission. And how could anybody believe the report that invented a "magic bullet" theory which supposed to explain how a mixed up character like Lee Harvey Oswald, could have managed to shoot both president and governor Connally six times, including a fatal frontal shot to John F. Kennedy's head, clearly visible in Zapruder film, firing only three times in 5.6 seconds from up behind the motorcade. The facts of the case show that there had to be another gunman, and if so than we have a conspiracy, and everything that happened later both to principal characters, witnesses and shift in foreign and domestic American politics, only give proof to that conclusion.

Oliver Stone waste no time in presenting the case. I've never seen a movie 197 minutes long, that doesn't let your mind wonder for a second. People who testify to various aspects of the assassination are moving in front of your eyes like passing trains and every one of them puts another piece in never completed puzzle of conspiracy behind the Kennedy assassination. This film, along with "Executive action", filmed only 10 years after, in 1973, show that the plot to kill John Kennedy is worked out and organized in a way that there's no doubt that it leads to the highest ranking government officials and all the industrial and banking tycoons that had everything to loose with JFK's policy of non involvement, racial equality and détente with the USSR. Later assassinations of Martin Luther King, and Robert Kennedy, show that this pattern was used in a same manner, to eliminate most dangerous political threats to the "big money" and conservative politics. Like Donald Sutherland's "X" has said in the movie "Who benefited? Who has the power to cover it up?", these are the questions Stone's film is trying and in my opinion succeeding in giving good answers to. More than recommended, a must see.