MovieChat Forums > Executive Action (1973) Discussion > This movie was far better than JFK

This movie was far better than JFK


Foster, Farrington, Ferguson, Paulitz, the Professor, Tim etc all portray the epitome of powerful men who control events behind the scenes and take action to make changes to the way the country is run. Also the cold, calculating and unemotional behavior of the four members of each team of gunmen were as they would be in real life.

On the other hand the conspirators in JFK (particularly Joe Pesci) behaved like raving maniacs, they were so emotional and irrational that made the whole story unbelievable.

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JFK featured a talented filmmaker (Stone) doing some amazing things from a cinematography standpoint, but I do agree--- it doesn't really work all that much for me in the long haul. I have studied the assassination somewhat and I still really can't to this day articulate what Clay Shaw's role may have been in all of this. Also, Jim Garrison was made out to be something that he was not. One of the few scenes of this movie that I still really like though is the recreation of the actual crime with the three gun teams in Dealy Plaza. It was extremely well done and these shooters were much like the ones from executive Action. Cold, calculated, and devoid of any emotion.

I agree fully with your comments on Executive Action. This film is a real gem and likely got much of it right. The rightwing powerbrokers are superb and that (in my opinion) is likely what happened or at least who was responsible. The best thing about this film is that it was made just less than ten years after the crime and so many of the locales depicted are largely unchanged. Great movie!

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This film is superb. JFK was a real letdown compared to this one.

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JFK uncritically endorsed the results of Jim Garrison's "investigation" of the alleged assassination conspiracy, which was nothing more than an antihomosexual witch hunt. Garrison was a professional gay basher who made his reputation as New Orleans DA by making frequent, well-publicized raids on French Quarter gay bars while ignoring the presence of the Marcello mafia family in the city's rackets. Virtually all of his suspects--Ferrie, Shaw--were gay.
Homophobia seems to have been at the bottom of Garrison's case, and it was well represented in the movie too.

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Mark Lane who made this film worked with Jim Garrison. There is also a quite simple reason a lot of the New Orleans connection was not gone into (all though it it is openly alluded to)...Clay Shaw was still alive when this came out. Do your homework! Clay Shaw died on August 14, 1974. This film was released in November of 1973. Also, Guy Banister is the office that they are discussing when they are worried about putting Oswald in the same building. The whole idea about having someone watching him who has know him for a while...that person is the Joe Pesci character. David Ferrie meet Lee Harvey Oswald when he was 14-15...so we have someone who has known him a while. Which they discuss...but not by name. Watch the film more closely or better yet read the book...this film quietly endorses everything in JFK...and I do mean everything. Mark Lane gave up a job in twenty minutes to come help Jim Garrison...

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Yep, EXECUTIVE ACTION is definitly better than JFK (and happily half as long, smile - being loooooong does not necessarily equal being good).

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TO:wmjaha,

Correct.
The human mind can only absorbed what the lower dorsal can endure.
Generally, about 1.5 hrs is best, maybe 2.0 hrs.
If a movie is much longer than this, you risk sending the audience to La La Land.

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jfk was a very good movie and it made a lot of points about the holes in the warren commission. and of course it had a top cast with marquee names. oliver stone cannot make a bad movie. the appeal of executive action is that it gets to the point much, much faster than jfk. it accounts for a lot of the loose threads and implications of kennedy's murder. the back and forth dialogue between the rich big shots who set up the assassination basically answer any questions the audience might have about the cia and so on. i suggest you see both pictures.

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[deleted]

When has Oliver Stone made a GOOD movie? Everything he does is so over-the-top, so blatant in its ideological bias.
Oliver Stone's first major credit was the screenplay of "Scarface," which was directed by Brian DePalma.
Quentin Tarentino's first major credit was the screenplay of "Natural Born Killers," which was directed by Oliver Stone.
From DePalma to Stone to Tarentino you can trace the gradual degeneration of American filmmaking.

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Nonsense. Have you not seen "Talk Radio"? That's a great film.

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You think Stone's first major credit was for writing SCARFACE in 1983?

You do know he won the Oscar for writing MIDNIGHT EXPRESS five years before that, don't you?

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[deleted]

JFK works for those interested in movies. EXECUTIVE ACTION works for those interested in conspiracy theories. They both work.

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FILM:
One aspect Of Executive Action that enhances its plausibility is the way
the conspirators allude to their past work, from the top down to the actual
gunmen. These guys had done all this before, in Cuba, Central & South America,
the Middle East, etc. Much of it was "plausibly deniable"--done on contract or
rogue while on private corporate payrolls, not directly for the US intelligence community.

REALITY:
All of this modus operandi, which had been whispered about (In 1973, I was confided in by a pilot involved in the 1960 Congo assassination of Patrice Lumumba), was soon to be publicly documented by Congressional hearings into
the CIA. Argentina, Iran, Lebanon....all beneath the placid Eisenhower surface.

FILM:
So in the film storyline, these guys had done this so many times before, it
was second nature--and they had initially been recruited for their ability
to calmly not care...
...Except maybe Farrington. Burt Lancaster gave yet another awesome portrayal
of a guy with a (hidden) "heart." Since he ignored his "heart," overruling it
with his mind & will, his physical heart was dying, even as he killed.
--Foster knew %$#@ well it wasn't Farrington's "nerve" that was failing
as he gobbled nitro & prophesied "This is my last."
--Foster: "That was Tim. James Farrington. Heart attack."--Cold old Col. Breed
probably would have had Tim have somebody waste Farrington like the other witnesses, but nature took care of him first.

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They cater to different audiences. Stone is of course a professional epic builder (even if subtlety isn't his forte) and he was supposed to turn the JFK assassination theory into something palatable for the masses, which is one of the ways available to neutralize controversial issues -- maybe that wasn't his personal intention, but he sure as hell did the job.

Executive Action, however, is more serious and seems aimed at a more mature audience; the kind of audience that'll leave the theater in silence and with a knowing smile after credits roll because everything has been told and understood and there's nothing to add.

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Stone would have us believe that hundreds if not thousands of people in every branch of U.S. intelligence and the military were involved in the assassination.

Which is insane.

EXECUTIVE ACTION is b.s. too (Oswald acted alone) but at least it is semi-plausible b.s.

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Stone would have us believe that hundreds if not thousands of people in every branch of U.S. intelligence and the military were involved in the assassination.

Actually, Stone doesn't argue this. He says everything was cellularized. But he may have been too conservative.

EXECUTIVE ACTION is b.s. too (Oswald acted alone) but at least it is semi-plausible b.s.

Well, see, you buy into fairytales. So why wouldn't counter fairytale look like "BS" to you?

--
LBJ's mistress on JFK:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WcXeutDmuRA


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Executive Action may be rather dry, unremarkable and actually too low-key for its own good, but it´s indeed better than the awful structural & stylistic mess of JFK. And it doesn´t have one of those mind numbingly righteous speeches by Kevin Costner to conclude the movie, either.



"facts are stupid things" - Ronald Reagan

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