Review of JFK (1991) by Eero V — 05 May 2014

During its first half, Oliver Stone's JFK is an occasionally thrilling an fairly engrossing conspiracy thriller. Then, it just starts falling flat like a cow's tail. The film is horribly long and confusing, and especially the courtroom scene in the end is prolonged and numbing, and reminds what a preachy filmmaker Stone can be at times.

Also, the story about the main character Jim Garrison's family issues is completely redundant, because the assassination of Kennedy and the people and events related to it is the main topic of the film, and because the subject and the story is (or should be) far more interesting than the characters.

Kevin Costner as Garrison is passable, and Joe Pesci, Tommy Lee Jones, Kevin Bacon and Donald Sutherland are all great in their roles. This story would have worked much better as two separate films or a TV mini-series.

As a one gigantic film it's just confusing, overstuffed and dull.