JFK (Director's Cut)

I was annoyed trying to watch this film. Someone should tell Stone that 1. Using recognizable actors for virtually every role is a major distraction, and 2. Extreme close-ups of actor's faces in the majority of the scenes are a poor excuse for film photography, and are a very lazy approach to directing in my opinion.

When faced with a (somewhat) complicated plot like JFK has, it is imperative that you pay attention to everything spoken by each character. This became difficult for me early on, since I found myself playing "name that actor" every five minutes. Off the top of my head, these are some of the actors appearing in this film: Kevin Costner, Sissy Spacek, Michael Rooker, Jack Lemmon, Walter Mathieu, Newman from Seinfeld, Tommy Lee Jones, Donald Sutherland, Joe Pesci, Kevin Bacon, John Candy, Gary Oldman, the mother from Good Times (Esther Rolle?), Ed Asner, and Laurie Metcalf, and no doubt I have forgotten a few. I found it very distracting and detrimental to the film to include so many big name actors, and in fact the roles of many actors (Mathieu, Candy, and Sutherland) were too small to justify their "big name" appearance. Cameo appearances invariably detract from a film, and never fail to remind the viewer that "this is a movie". Film in its purest form takes the viewer into its world, and forces the audience to suspend their disbelief. Not once during this movie was the illusion created for me that this is anything other than "a movie".

Perhaps it's a personal preference, but I find extreme close-ups of characters faces to be lazy directing. They have their place, but it's certainly not to be used throughout HALF the film! This is not an exaggeration. I thought Joe Pesci had a head the size of a basketball by the time this was over. The pock-marks on Tommy Lee Jones's face look big enough to swallow a Peterbilt truck. Donald Sutherland's bug-eyes looked about the size of the Astrodome. Filmmaking should include inventive photography and scene framing, and far less cut-cut-cut tendencies which Stone has. Example: during the scene in which Pesci spills his guts to Costner, Pesci's toupee falls down close to his eyebrows, then is further back on his forehead, then back to the eyebrows, then back up his forehead. The position of the toupee changes back and forth many times during the scene, and since the scene involves Pesci talking almost non-stop for the entire time (while the toupee moves without being touched, sometimes during the same sentence!), it cannot be explained as anything other than poor editing. No doubt the scene was filmed multiple times and the most favorable snippets taken for the final cut. This is normal for any film, but how is it that such a large project could have been edited so ineptly?

The film also fails in that nothing really happens except in a flashback. I am not so shallow as to demand action all the time, and can accept that the story requires that it be told in this manner. However, most scenes have Costner asking questions of the other players, and while he's asking we see cuts-cuts-cuts by the director showing what transpired in the past. Fine. The problem lies in the fact that these flashbacks again serve to remind me that this is a movie. I watch Gary Oldman operating a hand printing press for 3 seconds, and wonder how much time was spent filming those three seconds. An hour? A day? Again, my disbelief was never suspended. Flashbacks are used with much better effect in American History X, which I would recommend to anyone who enjoyed JFK.

I also found that the investigating characters were not believable at all, and served no purpose other than spew theories... no real emotion or character development involved. The scenes between Costner and his wife seemed tacked on and meaningless, ditto for the hay necked scene between Rooker and Costner where the investigating team disagrees with each other. Seems to me that having the dissention between investigators as well as friction between Costner and wife were nothing more than pitifully average attempts, and not compelling at all.

I really did find the conspiracy involved to be quite intriguing. I have no reference point other than this film, however, but the ideas were put forth in a very interesting manner and Stone definitely got his point across. I'm not in any position to say what is true and what is not when it comes to Kennedy's assassination, but this film does force you to ask questions. One question I have is, if the conspiracy was undertaken to secure military funding, why do they not understand that CONGRESS makes the budget, NOT the President?

I have been very critical of Stone's filmmaking in this review. One of the reasons is due to the packaging on the edition I own. The VHS box has a statement by the director indicating that he hopes the film forces people to make up their own minds (which can only happen if they blank-out his next comment, which states that the Warren Commission findings are a myth), among other things, and includes his PICTURE on the box! I took his bold statements as a challenge, and watched the film very intently to see if Stone could back up his own assessments of this work. He succeeds in providing a compelling plot, but fails when it comes to making a compelling FILM..

all in all, the movie was excellent and opened my eyes and made me want to learn more about this.