JFK

At a time when Stone didn’t like American "high society" at all, this (at the time) most controversial Hollywood character proved to be an excellent fabricator with a sense of demagoguery that the viewer has no problem believing in. Stone dealt with the controversial topic in his own way, which may well be considered a true reconstruction until 2038 when the Warren Report is to be declassified. Although his leftist mindset oozes from the film at every moment, the aesthetics of the film's narrative are so evocative that we can set aside our own thoughts for three hours and be swept away by the director's analysis of the case conducted on the basis of a conspiracy thriller. The great editing blurs the distinction between documentary and cinematic fiction, and although the film is crammed with dialogue (and a final monologue by the brilliant Kevin Costner), it’s never boring. And even if three hours may seem like too much, when it's over, Stone makes the viewer feel like they've just untied the Gordian Knot. And yet... in the end, not that much gets resolved. (09/04/2006)

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. (09/01/2004)

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%. (12/16/2015)

One first-class acting performance next to another over unsettling images of American history. But above all it's nothing more than unnecessarily heartrending personal storyline of the main character, an unjustified enormous running time, incoherent narration of the individual scenes, and plot twists. It's as if Oliver Stone is frantically reading to me from a densely written notebook and occasionally jumping into another one where the same script is being written by someone completely different at a completely time. (07/18/2022)

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 :). (05/11/2003)