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

This movie was far better than JFK

posted 17 years ago by Altho73
22 replies | jump to latest

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.

[–] Freedom1981 10 years ago

Stylistically, I think 'JFK' is the better film. It's definitely the more entertaining of the two films.
But in terms of depicting a realistic dramatization of what a conspiracy to kill Kennedy would've looked like, it fell short.

The focus on Jim Garrison in 'JFK' distracts and takes away from the overall thesis in the film. In real life Garrison wasn't a hero. He was a rather flawed man who was criticized even by his peers in the Conspiracy Theorist community.

'Executive Action' is more realistic and more focused. It goes straight to the point and leaves more of a lasting impression

[–] Balberith 9 years ago

JFK is like Thomas More's Utopia while Executive Action is like The Prince by Machiavelli.

"A real man would rather bow down to a strong woman than dominate a weak one"

[–] 8 years ago

[deleted]

[–] whitecaps (40) 2 years ago

I just found out about this movie a few days ago. I agree it is better than JFK though Oliver Stone's film is more professional/slick. The interesting thing for me about this movie is that Stone's movie was so dense with information/dialogue that I had to stop watching it about half way through because it gave me a bit of a headache. After finishing the film I thought to myself: "the problem with JFK is the format, the prosecution/trial format made it heavy with dialogue. It would have been so much more interesting if Oliver Stone tried to show us his theory rather than tell us."

I guess because of this movie, Oliver Stone didn't want to use that format. Oliver Stone certainly knew about this film because the wiki of Executive Action mentions that Donald Sutherland is credited with the idea for this film and Donald Sutherland had a fairly major role in JFK.

A couple other points. There is a post here about the weakest argument in this film. One of the conspirators asks "is there no way we could simply blackmail JFK?" I guess even by 1973 it still wasn't known that JFK had affairs including with Mafia wives and might have even raped a woman in the White House.

An interesting fun fact, though I don't know if there is any connection between the two: The actor Will Geer plays the crusty conspirator Harold Ferguson. This movie was released on November 7, 1973. Early in the film, kind of out of nowhere, he says "there's nothing wrong with my heart."

In the Columbo episode that aired February 11, 1973, Will Ferguson played a crusty heart surgeon and medical researcher who has to undergo heart surgery to repair a valve during which his research assistant and fellow heart surgeon (played by Leonard Nimoy) tries to kill him.

One other kind of interesting point: JFK is over 3 hours long (and the directors cut is nearly 3 1/2 hours long.) This film is so short that it's slightly under 90 minutes even with all the 'padding' of the JFK and other speeches intercut into it. (I know the purpose of those clips was to provide contrast and not to be padding, but they obviously also added to the length of the movie.)