JFK

A quality film. Oliver Stone with another one of his burning topics of American history and again well executed. A good screenplay, great camera work (the black and white the authentic footage are fantastic and enhance the overall authenticity of the film), excellent editing, and quality acting performances. (01/09/2004)

If I were to add an adjective to JFK, it definitely wouldn't be the best Stone film. But it might deserve the adjective that it is the most personal film. Oliver Stone simply fulfilled his dream and made a film about a topic that interests him the most in modern American history. The film is made with obvious enthusiasm, passionately, and even obsessively. And I don't think it's a good thing. Stone lacks distance and falls into paranoid constructions. In the early 90s, I studied the assassination of Kennedy and read everything that was available in our country. It's like this - if you don't care about seriousness in America, you deal with conspiracy theories about Area 51 and ufology, from which Spielberg himself drew inspiration for his popular culture blockbusters, and if you want to appear serious, you deal with the Kennedy assassination and construct the craziest conspiracies. Oliver Stone understandably chose only the materials that support his theories from a vast amount of material. However, there are just as many clues that break down his idea. I dare not say that I know how everything happened, but in the end, the idea that Oswald acted alone seems more likely than any other version. If anything is really true, it is that the US government administration showed itself in a really bad light, whether it's the security measures before the assassination or the course of the investigation itself. But searching for a devilish conspiracy in all of this reeks of purposefulness. If any myth deserves to be ruthlessly shattered, it is primarily the idea of the "president of truth" that Stone works with. The popular sitcom Red Dwarf provocatively works with the idea in one of its episodes that the assassination will be thwarted and it leads to a disaster because Kennedy, weakened by constant social scandals from numerous love affairs and ties to the mafia, will not be able to steer America. Of course, it is a comedic exaggeration, but with a real basis. With the passage of time, it can be said that Kennedy was not different from his presidential colleagues and had more than enough scandals on his hands. For me, the film is unbearable in terms of length and especially its conspiratorial paranoid character. In JFK, I see the beginning of the pollution of the public space with the most stupid conspiracy theories imaginable. The mechanism that Stone used has only been recycled since then. Overall impression: 60%. (16/12/2015)

It makes absolutely no difference whether what is presented here is actually true or just one of many conspiracy theories. The way everything is presented, the way the performances are strong - Sissy Spacek has never been more beautiful - you still get a strong impression from it, especially about the fact that we're just puppets. Oliver Stone at his best. (25/02/2016)

Quite possibly the most inspirational film you'll ever see. On the other hand, it's by all accounts Stone's total magnum opus, with by far the best last line in a film, delivered by an appealingly unflappable idealist with the face of Kevin Costner. It's a hell of a job to make a politically engaged film that doesn't come across as mainstream and is as believable as possible. I wouldn’t say I agree with Stone's complete interpretation, but the overall scope and form of his historical research is breathtaking. (04/03/2020)

Stone is such a skilled filmmaker that he might even be able to give you the idea that Kennedy was a KGB agent and was shot by Martians. If it was filmed as brilliantly as JFK, you'd eat it up hook, line and sinker. I'm exaggerating, of course, but JFK is definitely formally perfect and very controversial in content. We will have to wait a few more years to know what really happened to Kennedy, when the CIA declassifies its documents and we can see the events surrounding the assassination in a broader context. Until then, we can only speculate and trust, say, Stone :). (11/05/2003)