This political thriller purports to provide an alternative to the Warren Commission's report that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in assassinating President John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963. Directed by David Miller, it features a screenplay by Dalton Trumbo that was based on the story by Donald Freed and Mark Lane's novel Rush to Judgment.
It stars Burt Lancaster and Robert Ryan (among others) as wealthy conspirators that want to eliminate the POTUS before he and the rest of the Kennedy clan - they foresee the White House being occupied by JFK, then Robert followed by Teddy through 1984 - can implement their agenda, which would change the United States of America into an intolerable country for them.
Actual newsreel footage is used to chronicle the President's steps: a nuclear disarmament treaty with the Soviet Union, the promise of equal rights for Negroes (Kennedy's words), and military withdrawal from Vietnam, which the conspirators fear would allow the Communists to take over Asia.
The actions finally convince a Southerner (played by Will Geer) to fund the assassination plot which, according to the film, included three gunmen (one behind a fence on a grassy knoll), and making a patsy out of Oswald, who was merely a Texas School Book Depository employee when the shots rang out near Dealey Plaza in Dallas, Texas at half past noon on that fateful day.
After Jack Ruby kills Oswald, the film's denouement includes Ryan receiving a phone call that Lancaster's character has died, then pictures of several other eyewitnesses (who were reportedly killed or died mysteriously in subsequent years) are shown.
A conspiracy theorist's delight!
It stars Burt Lancaster and Robert Ryan (among others) as wealthy conspirators that want to eliminate the POTUS before he and the rest of the Kennedy clan - they foresee the White House being occupied by JFK, then Robert followed by Teddy through 1984 - can implement their agenda, which would change the United States of America into an intolerable country for them.
Actual newsreel footage is used to chronicle the President's steps: a nuclear disarmament treaty with the Soviet Union, the promise of equal rights for Negroes (Kennedy's words), and military withdrawal from Vietnam, which the conspirators fear would allow the Communists to take over Asia.
The actions finally convince a Southerner (played by Will Geer) to fund the assassination plot which, according to the film, included three gunmen (one behind a fence on a grassy knoll), and making a patsy out of Oswald, who was merely a Texas School Book Depository employee when the shots rang out near Dealey Plaza in Dallas, Texas at half past noon on that fateful day.
After Jack Ruby kills Oswald, the film's denouement includes Ryan receiving a phone call that Lancaster's character has died, then pictures of several other eyewitnesses (who were reportedly killed or died mysteriously in subsequent years) are shown.
A conspiracy theorist's delight!