Intense, gripping, stylish and poignant

Better Late Then Never

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

Mostly, the movie is committed to the value of a good time.

Anyone who wants to learn from the past, not trust the present, and be hopeful for the future should see this film. It was very well put together and very informative. Even though it is suppose to be fiction, one can only feel that this is a thinking person's film. David Miller, the director, did not waste a minute of the viewers' time in giving this film great guidance to the end of the film. I felt like I had learned something and I wanted to research and learn more. If you are a lover of history and want to not make mistakes of the past, this is definitely a movie you will enjoy. Lancaster, Ryan, and Geer were completely believable. I wish they made movies like this again. This is the best political thriller I have seen in such a long time.

Executive Action (1973)** (out of 4) Almost exactly ten years after the assassination of President Kennedy, this film was released to theaters and quickly disappeared due to the controversy it started. This film is meant to show an alternate version of what really happened to Kennedy including there being three gunmen and Lee Harvey Oswald being set up. EXECUTIVE ACTION was made well before Oliver Stone's JFK and while it's always unfair to compare films, that's pretty hard not to do here. There's no question that the Stone film is so much better on every level but this film here remains somewhat interesting even though in the end it's a failure. I think the most interesting thing is how it tries to present itself as a documentary while at the same time admitting that it's not sure anything it's showing really happened. The documentary style includes stock footage being used to help tell its story but this here never really works and in many ways just makes the film seem cheap. I think the biggest problem with the film is that it doesn't know what it wants to do. Yes, it wants to present this alternate theory but in the credits it tells us that it's not certain if this really happened. What made JFK so great (and hated) is that it stood for something and ran with it. EXECUTIVE ACTION doesn't know what it stands for so the film tells us something and never comes close to convincing us of anything. Rich businessmen are afraid blacks, Jews and foreigners are going to take over. They gather up the cash to hire men to kill Kennedy. The performances in the film are good with Burt Lancaster and Robert Ryan leading the way. The direction is pretty bland and the laid-back style really doesn't do anyone any favors and especially the viewer. There's really no drama or tension in anything we're watching with the exception being the stock footage showing the countdown and aftermath of the assassination. EXECUTIVE ACTION is certainly worth watching but it's a failed attempt, although you can still give it credit for being ahead of its time.

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.

The film's thesis is that JFK was assassinated as a result of a conspiracy of wealthy men. In the title sequence, the producers admit that: "much of this film is fiction, much of it is also based on documented historical fact. Did the conspiracy we describe actually exist? We do not know. We merely suggest that it could have existed". In other words, the film's rationale is based on skepticism of the Warren Commission's lone-gunman theory.The three main characters, the villains, are Farrington (Burt Lancaster), Foster (Robert Ryan), and Ferguson (Will Geer), all suits, VIPs, presumably industrialists. But we're never told explicitly who they are or what they represent. Farrington is apparently the mastermind, the one who proposes that "the only possible (successful) scenario is three rifles with triangulated fire".Much of the dialogue consists of background information taken from historical government records related to Oswald and Kennedy's policies, and is therefore largely exposition. It's as if the film is giving viewers a history lesson. As a result, some of the dialogue sounds canned, scholastic, bookish.Casting is adequate. But acting is very, very wooden. Sometimes the cast acts like they're reading their lines off of cue cards.Color cinematography is conventional, though adequate. B&W newsreel footage of JFK, his speeches, the crowds that followed him, his arrival in Dallas, and Oswald permeates the film's plot, and gives the film a factual, semi-documentary look and feel. Some good aerial shots of Dealey Plaza lend authenticity to the story. And that moment when the motorcade enters the kill zone is quite dramatic, absent dialogue and music.Viewers who cling to the lone-gunman theory will hate this film. Viewers who believe in a conspiracy will probably prefer Oliver Stone's more recent, and more compelling film, "JFK" (1991). Back in the 1970s, "Executive Action" was the go-to film for those interested in this historical series of events. Now, the film seems very dated.