Change Your Image
guerre1859
Reviews
Executive Action (1973)
Very plausible docu-drama
The appeal of this motion-picture for me--and, I surmise, the reason it was made--is not so much to be a profitable work of art, but rather, a courageous effort to search for the truth.
The obscurity of the film shows that, despite the efforts of courageous progressives who put their money where their hearts were- -Kirk Douglas, Robert Ryan, Burt Lancaster, to name just a few--the reactionary, established powers had the last laugh.
Because the established order of the financial-military mafia that rules this country can only be sustained through fiction and, consequently, any social commentary trending towards fact must be marginalized or lampooned as 'conspiracy theory.'
Now, down to a couple of brass tacks. I already had studied the JFK assassination quite a bit when first I saw this film, but I was surprised that a movie made in 1973 could capture so many of the key elements of the conspiracy, and do it so seamlessly, without getting lost in a morass of details.
Two of these key elements treated compellingly in this film are:
1) the set-up of Oswald, the 'patron', as he is termed in the movie. Step by step Farington (the character played by Lancaster) briefs Robert Ryan (one of the principal conspirators) about Oswald's very, very curious background and CV--his activities in the USMC, his Russian language training, his abrupt departure, the inconsistencies of his emergency leave, his circuitous route to Moscow, his melodramatic defection, then his return to the US, his fair-play for Cuba activities--and, all along, the almost magical manner in which these gyrations went off without a hitch, and were even expedited and facilitated by various US agencies. As Ryan concludes: obviously was an agent of the CIA or ONI, his bizarre activities were machinations to send to the USSR as a 'mole', or 'trojan horse', but the Soviets were past masters in espionnage, and didn't take the bait.
2) a point so obvious that it sometimes is forgotten, or simply defies belief: a scene in the movie where a table-ful of reporters incredulously ask a Dallas police official what records, what transcripts or tapes have been made of Oswald's hours-long interrogations, only to be told--with no hint of embarrassment--that there are none. This is just one compelling example of another basic proof of the JFK conspiracy: the incredibly incompetent manner in which the official investigation of the crime was conducted. And yes, I mean incredible in the literal sense: a bit of investigatory incompetence here and there would be understandable--but the consistency of these 'errors' shows conclusively a deliberate effort to mask what really happened.
Please remember that Kirk Douglas and Burt Lancaster also were part of Seven Days in May, which JFK asked Frankheimer to make, a movie about a right-wing military takeover of the USA.
So for all those who poo-poo the idea of a JFK conspiracy and commonly dismiss believers in such a conspiracy as lunatics, consider the fact that such outstanding individuals as Douglas, Lancaster, and Frankenheimer, intelligent, and with many contacts-- BUT with a lot of DISincentives, nevertheless repeatedly made pointed efforts suggesting the existence of an organized plot to subvert democracy in the USA, doesn't this give you pause?
This is a reasonable representation of how the JFK conspiracy assassination may have been planned and executed; it's muted and almost documentary in approach, but this undramatic approach only makes it more powerful.
Philip Marlowe, Private Eye (1983)
Details details details
These remarks are limited and scope and concern the episode 'Finger- Man.' Powers Boothe is a quite likable actor, and the show is enjoyable, especially considering that in the waning years of the Reagan days American audiences were regaled with such gems as A-Team and Airwolf, so I wish to cast these criticisms with a bit of perspective. That being said, it's hard for me to watch this show because it gets a LOT of period details wrong. Hammett was writing his stories about the 1920s or even earlier, but Chandler set his in the 1930s and 1940s, but this series seems to confound the fashions of the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s. Cars, furniture, clothing, hairstyles of these three periods are juxtaposed in one episode. One example among many: the fat rich ringleader in the episode is using a brass candlestick telephone; a guy with that much money, living ostentatiously in the mid to late nineteen- thirties would NEVER have used such a phone--they were totally passe by that time, it would be akin to using a 2 pound Motorola brickphone today instead of a couple of ounce millimeter thin smartphone. But clearly this kind of set-design is geared to average audiences who are clueless and will just swallow it and think 'gee! what a weird telephone!' Men's hair (too long in back) and ladies' styles also off, as are the mens' hats--and also how the hats are worn; you can just tell these modern actors probably NEVER wear hats, so when they wear them, they are telegraphing (at least to me); HELLO, I am an ACTOR WEARING a HAT see, THIS is the 1930s, I HAVE A HAT.' The interior of Marlowe's flat is also anachronistic; looks as if he has wall to wall carpet, which I've hardly ever seen during that period. Just a myriad of little details wrong, which, collectively, are a thorn in the eye. The gunfight was also almost laughably bad, both in how it was played and what happened. For example, a fellow doesn't get shot in the shoulder by a Colt .45 and not get knocked down, or react in some way. It's unfortunate that this series seems like it had almost all the makings of something pretty darn good--but ended up distinctly so-so; was it meant to be tongue-in-cheek, cartoonish? A dream-like evocation of the past, a little bit like the Singing Detective perhaps? Or did they have too little time, too little money, (or too much coke, after all, it was the eighties) and they figured, 'hey, this is America, HBO, and why take the trouble to cast pearls before swine?' Now, I did personally enjoy seeing the street scenes filmed on Colorado Boulevard in Pasadena, California, in the early 1980s, and if one looks carefully, one can see Carodin's dilapidated clothing store and the Deli on the corner of Fair Oaks, a now long-defunct era of Old Town Pasadena before it was plasticized, which, like Raymond Chandler's LA, is now gone forever.