JFK

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. (03/04/2020)

I watched a three and a half hour long film, in which they actually talk all the time, and I wasn't bored for even a second. Does that say enough about how riveting JFK is? I hope so. Oliver Stone has masterfully handled the material and turned a script that could easily have seemed like a simple conspiratorial pub tale about the good guys and the villains into a believable story. The film literally engrossed me during the opening title sequence (a perfect montage of real and newly created shots underlined by the fantastic Williams) and until the end it kept offering something new that made it worth watching breathlessly. And the cast... Just great. (12/02/2011)

An impressive Kevin Costner and stickler for detail, Oliver Stone. An excellent reconstruction, but if we ask the question: “What has this actually done to change anything?" the answer is just a shrug. We’ll have to wait a couple more years for the final and official version of this review, but I’m sure it’s drawing near (I’m sure that they are hard at work on it right now). P.S.: The part with Donald Sutherland is perfect. (04/17/2011)

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)

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)