Review: The Murder of JFK

Moderate convictions are hard to find in the world of Kennedy assassination buffdom. Most full-time enthusiasts are either deeply-entrenched conspiracists or anti-conspiracists. Only someone with a tepid relationship to the events of November 22, 1963 would describe their view as anything along the lines of, "I don't really know, but I guess it seems like there might have been a conspiracy," which seems to be the attitude of the public at large.

And, yet, this seems to be the thesis of the documentary The Murder of JFK: A Revisionist History. In the latter half, particularly, the film descends into an endless parade of talking heads, most of whom seem to be sympathetic to the conspiracist perspective, but none of whom provide anything really meaty to evaluate. This journalist says that Oliver Stone's Oscar-winning film JFK grossly distorted the facts. Another assassination researcher says that this man is wrong, and that Stone's film is essentially adherent to reality. What's the evidence? What are the details? How is a naive viewer to evaluate their claims?

Selection and arrangement of archival footage is the film's strong suit. Crisp and clear footage of figures such as Lee Harvey Oswald, J. Edgar Hoover, and Fidel Castro is used to paint bold portraits, and seen-it-before footage such as Oswald's murder by Jack Ruby is not overused.

And at least The Murder of JFK never degenerates into the unapologetic dementedness that many conspiracy-sympathetic works do-- for example, claiming that Kennedy was murdered by gay sadists or that he was shot by the driver of the presidential limo. (No, seriously, I'm not making this up.) The Murder of JFK seems to believe that JFK was killed at the behest of Fidel Castro, perhaps with the complicity of the CIA. This thesis is never actually stated, though, and very little evidence is brought forward, except for the fact that both Castro and the CIA might have had motive.

Catch The Murder of JFK if you want a well-edited and conspiracy-centric primer on the Kennedy assassination. If you're looking for in-depth analysis and revolutionary thinking, skip it.