Under-Rated Due to Politics

Just saw this movie for the first time on TCM - May 29, 2016.

I thought the movie was good, not great, and that 6.4 is a pretty fair rating. The movie has a great story, but I don't think the screenplay, direction, and acting (except for Cliff Robertson, doing his best with the script he was given) did the story justice. For instance, I don't think this movie was nearly as good as John Ford's PT boat movie, They Were Expendable (1945), which has a rating of 7.3.

Also, I don't think 6.4 is a particularly low score. Here's an article that says 6.38 is the mean(average) IMDb user rating for all movies released since 1950 (http://www.njohnston.ca/2009/10/imdb-movie-ratings-over-the-years/).

Having said that, and after reading some of the comments on the message board, I agree that there definitely does seem to be a political bias involved in how some viewers see this movie. However, my hunch is that any ratings reflecting a political bias, whether positive or negative, probably cancel each other out and we're left with a fair rating. Just my opinion.

(By the way, from your avatar it looks like you're a fellow MSU alum. Go Green!)

I believe if this movie was about a sitting Republican president (in an election year no less), it would have been lampooned by the media. In fact, it probably wouldn't have been made. As it turns out, this was about a Democrat, sitting president in an election year, and I'm sure his opponents were pretty frustrated about it at the time. The double standard and political bias in entertainment existed then too.

That being said, I liked the movie, I respect JFK for the most part, and I think it's a fair ranking. Judging the movie on it's own merits is easy to do now - especially with how things turned out. If I was a Republican in 1963, I might have felt a lot different.

6.4 sounds about right