Powerful

Beautiful, moving film.

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

Great movie. Not sure what people expected but I found it highly entertaining.

Oliver Stone's JFK was gripping and you wanted to believe the conspiracy theory in the film. Executive Action is kind of like the prequel, and really makes you think can there be such a vast conspiracy out there that wanted JFK dead? Sure, the acting didn't earn any Oscar nominations, but still it's a movie to watch if you're interested in the Grassy Knoll genre.

If it's a given that infamous international events - like the assassination of President John F. Kennedy - which have never been fully satisfactorily explained are fair game for conspiracy theorists then Executive Action has as much right as any other to its moment in the sun. The first obligation of any film expounding a conspiracy is plausibility and the movie asserts nothing that is beyond the capabilities of a well- to-highly organised group of like-minded people with virtually unlimited funds and access to a network of highly-skilled professional assassins. in saying this I may have underlined just a fraction of the difficulties faced by any group of fanatics who have no use for a democratic form of government. If we put this to one side we are left with some excellent performances. If Robert Ryan is the best actor overall by a country mile - and here I'm basing judgment on a lifetime career - then Burt Lancaster and Will Geer are certainly fit to be mentioned in the same breath. All in all a provocative and entertaining film.

David Miller directed this speculative conspiracy film dealing with the assassination of U.S. President John F. Kennedy on Nov.22,1963, which this film theorizes was a combination of government and business interests, threatened by the social change and end of the Vietnamese war they feared would lead to disaster. Burt Lancaster, Robert Ryan, Will Gear, John Anderson, and Ed Lauter round out the cast of conspirators. Despite the explosive nature of this material(explored far better in later film "JFK") this film is inexplicably tame, presented in a coldly indifferent fashion most unsuited to the premise. Good cast keeps you interested, but film is ultimately a misfire.

Burt Lancaster and Robert Ryan lending their talents to this film are statements of integrity for each. The movie takes a pragmatic approach to the event and unlike the later film, JFK, does not set up the counter-conspiracy protagonists nor the after-assassination cover-up as a dramatic foil. It simply tells us how it could have been done and leaves it to the viewer to determine what is reasonable. In 1973 this was a wise move in that the Shaw case had been resolved a mere four years earlier. It is similar to the revelatory Ned Beatty scenes in the film, Network, in the scene where the Kennedy killers assure each other that the public will, "want to believe what they are told." That is the full extent of the American public's "role" in the movie, showing just the conception, practicing for and execution of President Kennedy. My only criticism is that the fleshing out of Jack Ruby's motives for eliminating Oswald seemed incomplete. We never get to see who Lancaster's character is connected to within the government, so we have to assume that he is capable of pulling off the elimination of Oswald without worrying that the plot will be uncovered. By today's standards this seems just a little bit loose but it also enhances the spookiness and horror of it all.