Reviews

One of Oliver Stone's most remarkable works. This four-episode documentary contains a great deal of information and it is a work of love and conviction. Over the decades, many researchers have independently contributed to unearth and unravel the complicated mess behind JFK's assassination. Stone's historical vision -which has matured over the years, along with his cinematic- here is backed by James DiEugenio's invaluable research on the subject. The result is a work which, not only brings valuable light into the mechanism behind the conspiracy, the assassination and the subsequent coverup, but which also reflects on the effects and consequences both culturally and politically for the US and the world.

It's unfortunate that the docuseries is not easily available on the more popular streaming platforms (with the exception of rent/buy in Amazon). It really should be seen and discussed by a wide public, particularly the younger generations.

I've always liked my movies with a healthy dash of realism and I wasn't disappointed by J. Patton Ford's Emily the Criminal, convincingly interpreted by Aubrey Plaza and co-starring Theo Rossi. The acting, writing and directing spoke volumes for itself. Not much glamour in the main character, a flawed but struggling young woman in a menacing urban environment. The chemistry between Plaza and Rossi was believable and charming. J Patton Ford concocts an increasingly suspenseful story and atmosphere, with some inevitable violent moments, but the story is convincing and entertaining always. The ending, while generally fine, could have been a tad less conventional/predictable. But, hey, I'm not complaining, in the midst of the deluge of well-funded mediocrity prevalent in today's movie market, Emily the criminal is a welcomed breath of fresh air.

This documentary is a great start to a forgotten historical narrative. I hope it's not the last. Today, as we embark in newer chapters of globalization, it's valuable to know how it all started. Lopez-Linares deserves our applause. I hope he develops this great story into a number of docu-series that do justice to the variety of themes and issues that still need serious development and exposure for todays global public. Spanish imperial history has been languishing for too many decades and badly needs a healthy dust-off. Fortunately, Spain has an monumental treasure of first hand archival documental history. It's high time it showed it off to the rest of the world. Thumbs up!!

I saw Executive Action (E.A.) when it came out. My impression was that I was viewing a first rate dramatic documentary and not "entertainment", not in the common sense of the word. This is an important point since you associate Hollywood with entertainment, and certainly not with the refutation of the official Warren Commission explanation that the assassination of JFK was the work of a lone assassin, and furthermore hypothesizing about a conspiracy converging upon Texas to assassinate the President of the United States, all the while keeping a straight face. There are exceptions of course and you do run into fine films such as "The quiet American" (1958), "The Manchurian Candidate" (1962), "Seven days in May" (1964) and a few others that, even though possessing a particularly strong factual base, in the end are softened with a good dose of the dramatic, typical of the familiar fiction, based on true events. We usually end up assuring ourselves: it's all really fiction in the end. It's only a movie...

But E.A. was a different sort of critter. It belongs to a special period in Hollywood, known as the New Hollywood. A period greatly influenced by the counterculture of the 60's, the civil rights struggle, the anti- Vietnam War protests, the baby boomers and rock and roll, and much more. So while Hollywood remained true to its bottom-dollar dogma, many of their more adventurous and creative artists and technicians, young and old, often worked at the fringes of the studios fueling the development of the growing independent film movement. E.A.'s screenplay was written by Dalton Trumbo, the most famous of the Blacklist veterans, inspired by attorney Mark Lane's well researched work "Rush to Judgment" and backed by a twelve member research team. This was an explosive project and studios kept their distance away from it. Press releases at the time claimed that threats were being made to the crew and stated that they had had to resort to filming in secrecy. It is a wonder its short-lived distribution ever materialized at all. Soon, this curious, lone, courageous and eloquent narrative illustrating the conspiracy to assassinate the President of the United States disappeared from sight.

From 1979 through the 1990s many official documents were declassified and made public generally strengthening the conspiracy thesis. In 1992 Oliver Stone collected a handful of the most likely of those conspiracy theories in his very popular "JFK". The 1990s were a particularly revealing decade with many well researched documentaries -with limited distribution- being produced. The Assassination Records Collection Act, the National Archives and the Assassination Records Review Board collectively made public thousands of classified documents. And by the first decade of the new millennium a host of local and foreign researchers were publishing well documented books detailing possible scenarios that pointed to specific conspirators. (In 2007 the DVD version of "Executive Action" was released). To this day some remaining classified documents are still expected to appear. The point is that, today the more informed consensus appears to agree with E.A., that president Kennedy's assassination was a well orchestrated coup d'état but without formal legal proof as to the identity of participants. There likely never will be.

As I watch E.A. again, I am still amazed by how a film, made in the early 70s, managed such a clear and unambiguous reconstruction of events, and have yet to see a more plausible or convincing explanation of what happened in 1963 in any other dramatic film. Executive Action lives on as the curiosity it always has been, an explosive film, well ahead of its time.

Find it on Apple iTunes, Google Play Movies, Vudu, Amazon Instant Video or Microsoft Store.