This is an excellent review.
Money Quote:
Platoon leader Stone carries out his mission here with his characteristic indifference to intellectual niceties. "JFK" is a guerrilla raid on our sensibilities. Stone doesn't bother to try to win the hearts and minds of the audience with coherent, rational argument; he simply takes them prisoner.
Money Quote:
He [Jim Garrison] would be an ideal vehicle for exploring the assassination controversy if it weren't for the embarrassing fact that the case he brought against Shaw was a shambles: the jury reached a "not guilty" verdict in less than an hour of deliberation, and it's almost impossible to find a conspiracy theorist today who thinks that Shaw had anything to do with the assassination.
Garrison tried his case mostly in the press and on television, regularly issuing wild pronouncements about evidence in his possession which would establish beyond doubt the identity of Kennedy's murderers. What he produced in court, however, was skimpy testimony from highly impeachable witnesses. Shamelessly, he turned the paucity of evidence for the conspiracy into evidence of a cover-up, and he wasn't shy (or particularly selective) about assigning blame for the supposed obstruction of his investigation. The C.I.A., the Justice Department and Lyndon Johnson all took their licks from Garrison in the media, and in one televised interview he suggested that Robert Kennedy was working against him, too.
The New Yorker, January 13, 1992
Money Quote:
Stone has also been saying that he's less interested in the "who" and the "how" of the conspiracy than in the "why" -- that the answer to why Kennedy was killed will lead us to the truth about everything else. The most charitable interpretation of that statement is that Stone isn't a rigorous logician: how, exactly, would someone determine why a President was murdered without first knowing who did it and how it was done.
Previous Relevant Blog Posts on Oliver Stone's JFK
At an event in Dallas, Stone says that someone gave orders to Allen Dulles and James Angleton to kill JFK.
Stone was interested in the White story.
A very good opinion piece published in the Washington Post.
An important article from The Atlantic by Edward Jay Epstein on Oliver Stone's JFK.
Wrone was a friend of Harold Weisberg's and was also very critical of JFK.
More inane comments on the JFK assassination.
An excerpt from an interview with Chris Wallace.
A good opinion piece from the Boston Globe.
Two letters from Weisberg to Stone.
A good review of Stone's JFK.
Two JFK researchers watch Stone's JFK.
An interesting look back.
Wicker reviews JFK for the New York Times and Weisberg responds.
Even this counterculture newspaper knew the truth about JFK.
David Lifton gave me permission to post this letter.
The Deputy Chief Counsel of the HSCA offers up some opinions.
Garrison instructed Tommy Lee Jones on how to play Clay Shaw.
The Advocate writes about Oliver Stone and Jim Garrison.
This post has a large Robert Sam Anson article on the film JFK from Esquire magazine.
Pershing Gervais, Garrison's first chief investigator, and reporter Rosemary James report back on the film JFK.
Lardner writes a memo to his editors about Oliver Stone.