Executive Action
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Movie Reviews of Executive Action
Movie Review: 3.5 stars: decent movie that has its moments
Summary: 3 Stars
"Executive Action" was rather cutting-edge for 1973 but pales in comparison to Oliver Stone's "JFK." That said, there are some moments of interest in this moderately-entertaining feature. I like the soundtrack theme music, some of the acting is top-notch, and some of the concepts and pro-conspiracy evidence is right on the money. Interestingly, Ed Lauter is also in "Thirteen Days" (for you trivia buffs out there...)
vince palamara
Movie Review: "EXECUTIVE ACTION" -- Similar To Oliver Stone's "JFK" In Many Ways (i.e., All Motive, No Evidence)
Summary: 2 Stars
1973's "Executive Action" stars Burt Lancaster, Robert Ryan, and Will Geer as three top-level (but never fully-defined or fleshed out) behind-the-scenes plotters who are secretly arranging President John F. Kennedy's demise via a "One-Patsy, Three-Gunmen" assassination ambush, which is to take place at Dealey Plaza in Dallas, Texas, during President Kennedy's visit to that city on the tragic date of November 22, 1963.
Now, where have I seen that type of "plot" being proposed before? Oh, yes, Oliver Stone's the man. He's got exactly the same type of crazy three-shooter, ONE-"patsy" scheme cooked up for his blockbuster motion picture, "JFK", which premiered almost two decades after "Executive Action".
I guess the three assassins who were popping away at JFK's head (as depicted in both "EA" and "JFK") just prayed that the rotten and corrupt U.S. Government would be wanting to frame the VERY SAME PATSY named Oswald after the bullets stopped flying in Dealey Plaza.
Otherwise, I cannot see how on the face of this globe that Mr. Lancaster, et al, could have thought they had a snowball's chance in Hades of their loony THREE-gun plan being successful.
Oh, well....I guess we'll just let the Government worry about those trivial little details, like covering up or getting rid of all the bullets and bullet holes in JFK's body that didn't have any chance of being traced back to the one lone "patsy" in the Texas School Book Depository Building on Elm Street.
About the only redeeming feature in this fairy-tale of a movie is some very nice aerial footage taken of Dealey Plaza and the Book Depository (filmed by Warner Brothers from a helicopter, circa early 1973).
The remainder of this conspiracy-oriented film is total fiction, but unlike Oliver Stone's tripe that would surface 18 years later, the producers of "Executive Action" were at least honest and forthright enough to tell their audience right from the very beginning of the movie that "much of this film is fiction". During the opening credits, we find these words printed on the screen.....
"Although much of this film is fiction, much of it is also based on documented historical fact. Did the conspiracy we describe actually exist? We do not know. We merely suggest that it could have existed."
A fatal flaw within the type of script that a film like "Executive Action" heavily relies on is that Lee Harvey Oswald (the so-called "patsy" in this film as well as in Oliver Stone's "JFK" eighteen years later) has been almost completely lost within the sea of unsupportable and invented conspiracy-tinged speculation. At the very least, Oswald has been severely misrepresented in films like "Executive Action" and "JFK".
These type of pro-conspiracy movies about the assassination of America's 35th President rely almost exclusively on fanciful guesswork, conjecture, and a perceived motive that 'so-and-so' supposedly had for wanting President Kennedy killed in 1963.
In "Executive Action" (which made its debut in U.S. movie theaters on November 7, 1973, fifteen days prior to the 10th anniversary of JFK's death), we're told that the bottom-line motives that these fictional bigshots in the movie had for desperately wanting JFK dead were: Vietnam, Kennedy's civil-rights policies, and JFK's negotiations with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev (specifically, the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty was being frowned upon in a big way by the assassination plotters). God forbid that peace should prevail in the world, huh? <chuckle>
But, amid the conspiracy plot being hatched by Lancaster and Company, the PERSONALITY of John F. Kennedy's real killer, Lee Harvey Oswald (and LHO was, indeed, Kennedy's lone assassin based on every scrap of hard evidence to be found when investigating the JFK case), has been pretty much totally lost and/or ignored by the filmmakers.
And that's truly a shame. Because if there was ever a person who had the perfect profile and personal make-up of a potential Presidential assassin (a REAL assassin/triggerman, that is, and not just a person to use as a "patsy"), it was probably 24-year-old Lee Harvey Oswald.
For a balanced counterpoint to movies like "Executive Action" and "JFK", I'd highly recommend watching the 1964 documentary film "FOUR DAYS IN NOVEMBER".
And I'd also recommend reading two books, Vincent Bugliosi's "RECLAIMING HISTORY" and Jean Davison's "OSWALD'S GAME", both of which are a mile deep in something called the "true facts" surrounding the events of 11/22/63, and both of those books are also richly steeped in the largely-overlooked truth about a man named Lee Harvey Oswald, who was the man that owned the Mannlicher-Carcano rifle that was proven to have killed President Kennedy.
DVD BONUS FEATURES AND SPECIFICATIONS:
This first-ever DVD release of "Executive Action" includes an interesting bonus supplement in the form of a 10-minute "Vintage Featurette" entitled "November 22, 1963: In Search Of An Answer".
That featurette is a pretty good behind-the-scenes type of program, with 1973 interviews with the film's main stars (Lancaster, Ryan, and Geer), plus interview segments with producer Edward Lewis and screenplay writer Dalton Trumbo as well.
The Warner Home Video DVD (which came out on October 23, 2007) also includes one additional bonus item, a "Burt Lancaster Trailer Gallery", which consists of four theatrical trailers for films starring Mr. Lancaster, including the original trailer for "Executive Action" and one for the similarly-themed 1964 movie "Seven Days In May".
This DVD presents "Executive Action" in good-looking Anamorphic Widescreen (1.85:1 aspect ratio), with a Dolby Digital 1.0 Mono soundtrack (English only).
The film is in color and has a running time of 91 minutes.
Subtitles: English; French.
Chapters: 9.
David Von Pein
November 2007
Movie Review: does not hold together very well
Summary: 2 Stars
about fifteen or so minutes into this film there is a scene where a group of what are obviously wealthy,conservative conspiritors,led by a cranky Will Geer,question Burt Lancaster about his plan to take out JFK..Geer asks Lancaster if murder is really necessary,and demands to know if"we",meaning of course,his cabal of right wing plotters,didn't have some dirt on the then-president which would sully his name and bring him down without bloodshed..The lancaster charecter replies with a stright face,that,no,they had tried very hard but they just couldn't come up with anything that would do the trick...From this point on the entire premise of the film becomes suspect,if not downright unbelievable..For ,afterall,JFK,and,in fact,most of his family,had a lot of dirt on thier hands...dirt that was pretty much of an open secret,dirt that if made public then,in 1963,would surely have denied Kennedy re-election..Bedding marylin Monroe for starters..Or bedding Judith Campbell,who also happened to be Sam Giancanna's's squeeze(Sam being a chicago Mafia type)..Beding any number of starlets,showgirls,and suchlike,sometimes two at a time,seems dirt enough to bring down any president(or at least get him into the soup,as evidenced by what happened only recently to Bill Clinton)..So how come,if this plotline is so plausible,none of this was known to the plotters?Surely the sort of men being portrayed,rich,powerful,arrogant extremists(of the sort that even now are running our government)with thier hooks everywhere,who are so able to manage what,if this story is to be believed,was the conspiracy of the century,would know about all of JFK's adulterous affairs?The same sort of extremists portrayed as plotters in this film would have also known about J.Edgar Hoover's massive files containing dirt on everyone,JFK included,and the fact that JFK & Hoover were enemies,and that Hoover was keen to leak his dirt on JFK so as to quash his re-election bid...So this film,like the later,more elaborate,less believable Oliver Stone film,falls into the category of "Nice try but...."
It seems fair to assume that the JFK murder was not the result of any lone nut assassin but,instead,a conspiracy of some sort..JFK had the mafia,Castro,and the right wing elements in this country on his bad side,any one of which alone,or any combination working together,might have wanted JFK dead..He had botched the bay of pigs invasion,thus upsetting the anti-castro cubans and the CIA as well...He was talking about withdrawing from south-east Asia,which perturbed the military industrial complex...the list of those who might have wanted to see JFK laid low is almost endless,so a conspiracy by some,or even all of the above is not out of the question..What IS out of the question is portraying from a JFK-AS-ICON-HERO standpoint,as if all of the brilliant,if nefarious minds arrayed against him could not find anything that would bring him down besides bullets..
The film was made on the cheap,has very little action,is long-winded and talky..Sure,it has Burt Lancaster and Robert Ryan in it but so what?Ryan was one step away from death ,suffering at the time from terminal cancer,and was starring in just about anything that gave him a paycheck(his last film not being this one but,instead,an Italien western film which also featured Alex Cord),and Lancaster was in-between going from a big star to a secondary player...His "Elmer Gantry","Rainmaker","Apache","judgement At Nuremburg"days being behind him,and his final real star turn,in"Atlantic City"being still a few years away,so the fact that these two headlined this film is not as big a thing as it might seem...Will Geer,the grandpa on the teevee program"The Waltons" had been blacklisted in the 1950s,said to have"communist leanings",so it was not a real stretch to see him supporting a film that suggested that the same right wing elements that had tried to sink his career had also conspired to murder JFK...
This film does get one thinking,but it has too many holes and,as subsequent revealations have shown,does not really hold up well under scrutiny...
Movie Review: Unbelievably bad!
Summary: 1 Stars
This movie is trash from one end to the other- no matter whether you believe Oswald did it or not.
The production values are terrible, the dialoge is borderline idiotic, and one small problem, the "reason" given for the whole operation is stupid and vague. In addition, NOBODY questions anything.
Obstacles to the successful completion of the assassination (as shown in the movie) are either ignored or glossed over without comment.
One of my favorite parts of the whole movie is when Will Geer's character seems to have second thoughts about the operation and inquires if there isn't anything that Kennedy has done that could be used to blackmail him (or words to that effect.)
Burt Lancaster chuckles and tells Geer that they are "way ahead of him," and they could find nothing.
They must have employed the Mr. Magoo private detective agency.
Look for the overhead microphones bobbing in many of the shots and the kid throwing papers on the morning of the assassination wearing a Texas Rangers baseball cap- the Rangers didn't move to the DFW area until 1972. This is not to mention the famous "wanted for treason" handbill that was seen in Dallas before the assassination WRAPPED around the paper.
The final insult is the BS about the actuary who determined that the odds of witnesses being dead by a certain date were about a Google-plex to one. It was found that the person did the calculations incorrectly and the odds were much lower.
Movie Review: Dont Buy It
Summary: 1 Stars
Cant help but agree with *Charles H Levenson* aka chubbybuns* on this one. They had enough dirt on Kennedy to keep the laundromat industry in service until at least Watergate. 'Chubbybuns' did leave out the fact that JFK's old man got the mob to buy thousands of votes in Chicago which enabled JFK to stumble across the finish line in the closest election fought in US history up until that time. Oh, Then there was the Kennedy administration's plot to kill Castro. That isnt enough dirt along with the sexual liasons to kick the guy out of office in the year 1964? Clinton got impeached in '98 for nothing nearly as bad. Remember people, this was the era when Barbara Eden wasnt allowed to show her navel on TV!! No 'Executive Action' as drastic as assassination was necaessary.
Also, there is a massive historical blunder in this film. Burt Lancaster - one of the cheif consirators - is showed watching the assassination played out live on TV in the comfort of his room. As the motorcade approaches Elm St. - the triangulated kill zone - he moves forward in his seat with a serious concerned look on his face, to watch if the massive scenario is played out successfully. WRONG!!! The killing was never played live on TV. As we all know Zapruder was the only one to film the assassination on 8 mill film. and that wasnt shown on national TV until 1975.
DONT BUY IT!