Executive Action (1973)

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Siskoid
Executive Action is a strange film of ideas rather than characters, a piece of potential history grounded in real history, showing how a conspiracy to assassinate President John F. Kennedy might have been planned, executed, and covered up. It's a procedural for a what if scenario, and though Burt Lancaster gives an actual performance as one of the chief conspirators, looking bed-ragged from stress (or remorse?) by the end, everyone is just a "type". There's no one to really latch onto EXCEPT the real people of the story, as there's plenty of file footage of JFK and Lee Harvey Oswald woven through the picture. Though a fabrication, the movie strongly makes the point that though this didn't happen exactly, something DID, MUST HAVE, happened that's different from the official story. It's basically a heist, retroactively imagined from the results, well executed but not without its hiccups, just as the movie tropes would have it. The movie tells the story of the assassination, and highlights its discrepancies and strange coincidences, so as to at least make you ask questions. Rather fascinating, if a little remote as a piece of film. 3 years 11 months ago