JFK (1991), Winter Kills (1979) Gather ye 'round, all you conspiracy theorists, all those who distrust and suspect all authority figures, all those who cringe as they see all their worst paranoid fantasies come to life........
Let dread and paranoia pulsate madly.......let evil scumbags of every variety, income bracket and social standing run rampant......
Let your worst fears be realized and gaze nauseously into the bleak past and even more bleaker future.........
We've got the movies for YOU right here, folks!
First up, we'll qualm our queasiness for the 3 hours it takes to digest Oliver Stone's epic "JFK". It's the director's nuclear flamethrower takedown of the ludicrous Warren Commission report on the murder of John F. Kennedy.......you know, the one that concluded one lone assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald blew the top off of Kennedy's head.
Only people who believe in Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny and whatever diarreah comes out of Trump's mouth believe the Warren Commission report.........
And you'd better believe Stone painstakingly decimates every useless page of it.......and while doing all that, he doesn't forget to make it a suspenseful compelling movie along the way.
By the time the film finishes, the only question left for a viewer is to decide which unholy collection of conspirators engineered JFK's death......and set the United States on a chaotic, tumultuous and blood soaked future path.
While Stone's film makes for grim viewing every step of the way, 12 years earlier, one of the most misbegotten, star-crossed oddball movies ever made turned a warped, satiric eye on the JFK assassination.
Writer-director William Richert boldly chose to adapt "Winter Kills" yet another sardonic political conspiracy thriller by author Richard Condon ("The Manchurian Candidate", "Prizzi' Honor")
With tongue ever so slightly in cheek, Condon's book thinly fictionalized the assassination and its major players...(Oswald assassin Jack Ruby, for example, becomes 'Joe Diamond') The murder of Kennedy-esque President Tim Kegan is investigated by his half brother Nick (Jeff Bridges) after a second assassin confesses before dying.
Nick's encouraged in this dangerous quest by his all powerful kazillionaire father 'Pa' Kegan (played in his usual gaseous, boisterous style by director John Huston, appearing even more avuncular and sinister than his supremely evil "Chinatown" character Noah Cross)
Director Richert went far more over-the-top than Condon's novel, turning Bridge's sleuthing into a bizarre"Dr. Strangelove" hall of mirrors funhouse, mocking spies, gangsters, political operatives, femme fatales, big business and even a prescient arrow aimed at a vast information network invading everyone's privacy......
And like an all star contemporary 'Alice In Wonderland', Bridges encounters a guest star roster of suspicious grotesques, played by Sterling Hayden, Eli Wallach, Anthony Perkins, Toshiro Mifune, Ralph Meeker, Richard Boone......and an uncredited Elizabeth Taylor.
Even more daring, Richert doesn't shy away from the novel's most controversial, outrageous final twist.........in which all the blind alleys lead Bridges to confront the ultimate conspirator and perpetrator of his brother's assassination . (And you'll hear no more from us on this subject....see for yourself......)
Sounds terrific, we know......but truthfully, the film barely holds itself together, due to the legendary troubles then went on during its making......loss of funding, shutdowns of production, shady activities of its producers, one of whom was found dead under mysterious circumstances.)
It's a wonder it ever saw the light of day and its distributor Avco-Embassy despised the film and quickly buried it, given that what few people saw it left scratching their heads.
We still liked it, with all its crazy casting, lunatic twists and turns, random globe trotting and easily one of the most nutso, WTF final scenes in thriller history.
We say buckle up and make this doom laden duo a wondrous double feature of lying, spying and dying......For JFK, 4 stars (****), for 'Winter Kills', a wild 'n crazy 3 stars (***)......though neither of them can ever explain how we arrived in our perilous times.......where the Asylum's being run by the worst rubber-room psycho ever.....
No comments:
Post a Comment