Quartile rating: 8/10 · 1 rating
Follows the investigation into the assassination of President John F. Kennedy led by New Orleans district attorney Jim Garrison.
JFK is a masterclass in conspiratorial filmmaking — Stone weaves a dense, labyrinthine plot with remarkable clarity and momentum, and the ensemble cast (Costner, Jones, Pesci, Spacey, Bacon, Oldman) delivers uniformly strong performances. Kaminski's (actually Robert Richardson's) kinetic, mixed-format cinematography — blending newsreel, 8mm, B&W, and color — is genuinely innovative and influential. However, the film's novelty is somewhat tempered by its roots in well-trodden conspiracy-thriller territory, drawing heavily from existing JFK literature. The ending — Garrison's courtroom monologue, while passionate and well-acted — is overlong and preachy, essentially a lecture rather than a dramatically satisfying conclusion, and the acquittal deflates rather than resolves the narrative tension.