JFK (film)

JFK is a 1991 American film directed by Oliver Stone. It examines the events leading to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and alleged subsequent cover-up, through the eyes of former New Orleans district attorney Jim Garrison (played by Kevin Costner). Garrison filed charges against New Orleans businessman Clay Shaw (Tommy Lee Jones) for his alleged participation in a conspiracy to assassinate the President, for which Lee Harvey Oswald (Gary Oldman) was found responsible by two Government investigations: the Warren Commission, and the House Select Committee on Assassinations (which concluded that there was another assassin shooting with Oswald). The film was adapted by Stone and Zachary Sklar from the books On the Trail of the Assassins by Jim Garrison and Crossfire: The Plot That Killed Kennedy by Jim Marrs. Stone described his fictionalized film as a "counter-myth" to the "fictional myth" of the Warren Commission.

The film became embroiled in controversy even before it was finished filming, after The Washington Post national security correspondent George Lardner showed up on the set. Based on the first draft of the screenplay, he wrote a scathing article attacking the film. Upon JFK's theatrical release, many major American newspapers ran editorials accusing Stone of taking liberties with historical facts, including the film's implication that President Lyndon B. Johnson was part of a coup d'etat to kill Kennedy. After a slow start at the box office, Stone's film gradually picked up momentum, earning over $205 million in worldwide gross. JFK went on to win two Academy Awards and was nominated for eight in total, including Best Picture.

The film opens with newsreel footage, including the farewell address in 1961 of outgoing President Dwight D. Eisenhower, warning about the build-up of the "military-industrial complex". This is followed by a summary of John F. Kennedy's years as president, emphasizing the events that, in Stone's thesis, would lead to his assassination. This builds to a reconstruction of the assassination on November 22, 1963. New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison (Kevin Costner) subsequently learns about potential links to the assassination in New Orleans. Garrison and his team investigate several possible conspirators, including private pilot David Ferrie (Joe Pesci), but are forced to let them go after their investigation is publicly rebuked by the federal government. Kennedy's suspected assassin Lee Harvey Oswald (Gary Oldman) is killed by Jack Ruby (Brian Doyle Murray) before he can go to trial, and Garrison closes the investigation.

The investigation is reopened in late 1966 after Garrison reads the Warren Report and notices what he believes are numerous inaccuracies and conflicts. Garrison and his staff interrogate several witnesses to the Kennedy assassination, and others who were involved with Oswald, Ruby, and Ferrie. Upon Shaw's informal questioning, Shaw denies any knowledge of meeting Ferrie, O'Keefe or Oswald, but he is soon charged with conspiring to murder the President. Another witness is Willie O'Keefe (Kevin Bacon), a male prostitute serving five years in prison for soliciting, who reveals he witnessed Ferrie discussing Kennedy's assassination with Shaw, Oswald, and a group of Latin men. As well as briefly meeting Oswald, O'Keefe was romantically involved with a man he knew as "Clay Bertrand," who was Clay Shaw. Jean Hill (Ellen McElduff), a teacher who describes that she witnessed shots fired from the grassy knoll and she heard four to six shots total, tells the investigators that Secret Service threatened her into saying only three shots came from the book depository, revealing changes that were made to her testimony by the Warren Commission. Garrison and a staff member also go to the lone nut snipers lair of the Texas School Book Depository and aim an empty rifle from the window through which Oswald was alleged to have shot Kennedy. They conclude that Oswald was too poor a marksman to make the shots, and two of the shots were much too close together, indicating that two additional assassins were also involved.

After discovering electronic surveillance microphones that had been planted in his offices, Garrison meets a high-level figure in Washington D.C. who identifies himself as "X" (Donald Sutherland). "X" suggests there was a conspiracy at the highest levels of government, implicating members of the CIA, the Mafia, the military-industrial complex, Secret Service, FBI, and Kennedy's vice-president, Lyndon Baines Johnson, as either assassination pre-planning co-conspirators, or, as having motives to cover up the truth after the assassination. "X" explains that the President was killed because he had started to order the removal of United States troops and advisors out of the Vietnam War, his administration had dramatically increased mafia prosecutions 11-fold, Kennedy had ordered control of secret para-military operations removed from the CIA and given the control to the Department of Defense Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Kennedy had moved to close dozens of military bases nationally and worldwide. "X" encourages Garrison to keep digging and to make further arrests.

Some of Garrison's staff begin to doubt his motives and disagree with his methods, so they leave the investigation. Garrison's marriage is strained when his wife Liz (Sissy Spacek) complains that he is spending more time on the case than with his own family. After a sinister phone call is made to their daughter, Liz accuses Garrison of being selfish and attacking Shaw only because of his homosexuality. In addition, the media launches attacks on television and in newspapers attacking Garrison's character and criticizing the way his office is spending taxpayers' money. Some key witnesses become scared and refuse to testify while others, such as Ferrie, are killed in suspicious circumstances. Before his death, Ferrie tells Garrison that he believes people are after him, and reveals there was a conspiracy around Kennedy's death that involved co-conspirators that were involved in the CIA operation MONGOOSE.

The trial of Clay Shaw takes place in 1969. Garrison presents the court with further evidence of multiple killers while debunking the single bullet theory, proposes a Dealey Plaza shots scenario involving three assassins who fired six total shots, but the jury acquits Shaw on all charges. The film reflects that members of that jury stated publicly that they believed there was a conspiracy behind the assassination, but not enough evidence to link Shaw to that conspiracy. Shaw died of lung cancer in 1974, but in 1979 Richard Helms testified under oath that Clay Shaw had, in fact, been a part-time contract agent of the Domestic Contacts Division of the CIA. The end credits state that secret records related to the assassination will be released to the public in 2029. The film stirred people to contact their political representatives, which led directly to the creation of the United States Assassination Records Review Board, which from 1995 to 1998 released many of the secret documents, with the balance of these assassination related secret documents due to be released for the public by 2017.