JFK: 4K UHD Blu-ray (Warner Bros./StudioCanal, 1991) Shout! Studios

“What kind of a peace do we seek? Not a Pax Americana, being enforced on the world by American weapons of war. We must reexamine our own attitudes toward the Soviet Union. We must make the world safe for diversity. For in the final analysis, our most basic link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children’s future…and we are all mortal.”

Excerpt from President John F. Kennedy’s address to the American University, 1960

Oliver Stone’s JFK (1991) demands a deeper understanding of the actual events that took place before, after and during the president’s assassination in Dealey Plaza on Nov. 22, 1963. What follows herein is only partially a review of one of the most controversial motion pictures ever made, densely packed and ingeniously stitched together. Some will continue, undoubtedly, to debate Stone’s masterpiece as being severely clouded through the lens of a propagandist filmmaker. But very important to note; first, even before JFK was released, certain factions in the media were bashing Oliver Stone as somehow having insulted the intelligence of the American public, needlessly and callously to have reopened a still very fresh wound with a manipulation of ‘the facts’, thereby meant to create a bizarre revisionist conspiracy theory. The venom inculcated in these attacks on Stone, as both an artist and, more importantly, seeker of the truth, were made even before a single frame of JFK had been shot. That Stone was allowed to make his movie is a miracle. That JFK would eventually serve as a catalyst to dismantle the fictional account of the president’s murder as put forth by the Warren Commission and its laughable ‘magic bullet’ theory, forcing the federal government to reopen its investigation and declassify documents in the national archive ahead of the original 2029 date, thereupon proving Stone’s research and resultant crime epic had more grit, bite and truth in it, is a testament to the tenacity of an artisan/genius that continues to resonate throughout the hallowed halls of the Washington establishment, who otherwise, would have never acknowledged the egregiousness in their long overdue oversight and deliberate cover-ups.

More ominous were the incidents that dogged the production of JFK; footage lensed in Dallas by Stone, mysteriously to disappear on route to Technicolor back in Los Angeles, or later ‘ruined’ in the processing lab, forcing Stone to re-shoot scenes, and finally, place all his raw footage under lock and key, accompanied by two armed guards and himself. Stone supervised while his negatives were developed, to ensure their safety. If anything, in 1991 JFK became more than an affront to the Warren Commission report. It was a threat to an age-old obfuscation meant to defraud the public. One may wish to intelligently debate how well Oliver Stone succeeded with this blistering exposé. But there is little to deny Stone the girth gleaned from that formidable research. Therefore, it is in support of deriving clarity from the facts speculated upon in the movie, and with utmost esteem and reverence extended to the Kennedy family, for what undoubtedly remains a far more intimate - rather than national - tragedy, that this review appears.

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Oliver Stone sought to poke hot needles in an open wound of the American psyche when he undertook his re-investigation of the Kennedy assassination with JFK, an opus magnum of conspiracy theories contrary to the findings divulged in 26 volumes of the Warren Commission Report. Yet, perhaps even Stone was unprepared for the litany of counter-propaganda lobbied by the liberal media against both the film and his own credibility. Even before Stone had approved a final continuity shooting script, copies of his first draft had been circulated without his consent for the media to judge and condemn. While Stone diligently launched his intense cinematic critique he was besought by a rapid fire of disdainful interviews that, in hindsight, seem to parallel the overwhelming attempt made several decades earlier to discredit the reputation of another truth seeker: New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison – the ‘hero’ in Stone’s docu-drama, and, the only person ever to bring formal charges against the men he believed were involved in the conspiracy to assassinate John Kennedy. As Garrison would later comment, “It is essential that the American people get off their behinds and do something about the murder of Jack Kennedy…or fascism will come to America in the guise of ‘national security’.”

In the criminal investigation Garrison launched three years after the Presidential assassination against Louisiana businessman, Clay Shaw, more time was invested by the liberal media analyzing Garrison’s motives than analyzing the glaring loopholes and lies he had exposed to the grand jury. At one point, just prior to Shaw’s trial, NBC’s Walter Sheridan was leaking information on Garrison’s whereabouts and criminal findings to the U.S. State Department. Sheridan’s subsequent televised report on Garrison exhibited no subtly in media objectivity, but was instead a grotesque hatchet job, accusing Garrison of bribing and drugging witnesses in his attempts to prove his case. In his own defense, Garrison stood firm, saying “In over five years of office, I have never had a single case reversed because of the use of improper methods-a record I'll match with any other D. A. in the country.” Recently, more startling evidence has linked Walter Sheridan to Herbert Miller, a man who acted as an intermediary for Clay Shaw. Shaw’s attorneys were later implicated in an FBI memorandum sent to NBC’s New York offices, suggesting a plausible assassination scenario on Garrison’s life was also seriously considered. “I only wish the press would allow our case to stand or fall on its merits in court,” Garrison repeatedly stated, “It appears that certain elements of the mass media have an active interest in preventing this case from ever coming to trial at all and find it necessary to employ against me every smear device in the book.”

What Jim Garrison had uncovered, mainly from eye witness accounts was a mountain of evidence against both the U.S. federal government and John Kennedy’s successor, Lyndon B. Johnson. Those who wished to believe Garrison’s speculations found much more than probable cause that Kennedy’s named assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, was NOT the lone gunman, or even - and quite possibly - directly involved. “The thing that I am most concerned about,” wrote FBI director, J. Edgar Hoover at the time of the assassination, “…is having something issued so we can convince the public that Oswald is the real assassin.” Ultimately, the Warren Commission proved to be an obscene satire and pure fiction. Even those closely involved in its publication now concede its 26 volumes represent a cacophony of incomplete records, falsified testimonies, ignored and/or manipulated autopsy findings and most damming of all – CIA and FBI records contrary to their own findings, most of which were never followed up, and all of which were deemed ‘classified material’ – thus, denying the public to adequately judge the findings for themselves.

At the crux of the Commission’s deductions emerged The Magic Bullet Theory, ambitiously put forth by then junior senator, Arlen Specter: basically, one man – Lee Harvey Oswald – shooting through dense foliage from a sixth-floor open window with a defective Carcano rifle. With world class precision in 5.6 seconds, this lone gunman supposedly fired three fatal shots into the Presidential motorcade. Although panned today, The Magic Bullet Theory was almost universally embraced by the American press and public as a plausible explanation. According its inaccurate premise, a single bullet had passed through President Kennedy’s neck and head, also causing all of Governor Connally's superficial wounds (chest, right wrist and left thigh). Connally, who survived the ordeal never embraced The Magic Bullet Theory, though he clung to the notion Oswald had been the lone assassin, despite the fact an 8-mm home movie taken by bystander, Abraham Zapruter clearly identifies the fatal headshot coming from a much lower trajectory ahead of the Presidential motorcade. The ‘who, ‘what’ and ‘why’ of subsequent investigations put forth by Jim Garrison in his public trial against Clay Shaw, and carried over into Oliver Stone’s cinematic summation merely assured both detractors and supporters of conspiracy theories alike of one essential. JFK was indeed, the story that would not go away.

The only irrefutable fact everyone seemed to agree upon was that on November 22, 1963, President John Fitzgerald Kennedy met with an untimely end in Dealey Plaza. Almost instantly, local authorities, the FBI and the CIA sought to incriminate a loner, working on the third floor of Dallas’ School Book Depository; a man who, in death as in life, would prove to be so much more fascinating than the proposed ‘patsy’ put forth and supported by the Warren Commission’s findings. What is known today about Lee Harvey Oswald paints a very different picture. He was part of U.S. military intelligence, working to infiltrate a squadron of radical Cuban exiles in the Spring of 1960. He was given Russian language training while still a foot solider in the Civil Air Patrol overseen by David William Ferrie, later, making a faux defection to the Soviet Union that may or may not have contributed to the downing of Francis Gary Powers U2 spy flight over Russia on May 1, 1960. Prior to his staged Russian defection, Oswald had been drafted by a retired ONI operative, Guy Bannister into a private war. Operation Mongoose, as it eventually came to be known was funded by the U.S. government establishing a series of covert training camps and employing mercenaries dedicated to the planned assassination of Cuban dictator, Fidel Castro.

As part of his superficial involvement in Operation Mongoose, Oswald participated in a staged pro-Castro leaflet distribution on Canal St. in New Orleans in the summer of 1961. However, the base of his operations came from a makeshift facility at 544 Camp Street – not-so-coincidentally the same building housing Bannister’s private investigations firm, formally addressed at 531 Lafayette Street. In the months leading up to the Kennedy assassination, the enigma of Lee Harvey Oswald was largely built up through a series of complete falsehoods later published in the Warren Commission as cold hard facts. These ‘facts’ placed Oswald in multiple locations at the same time to support and sustain his complicity as an overt Marxist/Leninist. In fact, sightings of Oswald were as far reaching as a Mexican brothel frequented by Cuban patriots, and, a voter registration drive in Clinton Louisiana where, not coincidentally, Clay Shaw and David Ferrie were also sited. What is particularly disturbing about the Oswald legacy immediately following the assassination is how quickly he was written off as a liability by those same unseen forces he had diligently served.

Oliver Stone’s JFK picks up Oswald’s scent fairly early, exposing the glaring inconsistencies in the official Oswald mythology by providing witnesses who readily reported seeing gun smoke and hearing shots coming from the grassy knoll directly in front of the Presidential Motorcade. Yet, within hours of the assassination, Oswald was booked for another murder; Dallas policeman J.D. Tippit – despite the fact, powder residue tests conducted on him clearly indicate he had not fired a weapon on November 22.  By noon the following afternoon, after an intense twelve-hour interrogation of Oswald for which no known notes survive, Dallas police had already assessed Oswald’s guilt for both Tippit and the President’s murder. This ‘official’ mythology was snapped up by the media and published as fact even before the legal precedence of ‘due process’ and a public trial could determine ‘beyond a reasonable doubt’ either Oswald’s guilt or innocence.

And then, of course, there was Jack Ruby, a bag man for the Dallas mafia with various ties to both organized crime (including the Campisi crime syndicate) the Dallas police, and ONI: a man who had met Oswald socially in the preceding months, and many speculate – even years – before he fired the fatal shot that killed Oswald on Nov. 24, 1963 as he was being led by a police escort through the basement of the downtown precinct. The motives for Jack Ruby’s public execution have been heavily debated: that he was operating under direct Mafia orders and/or government objectives to silence an unwilling ‘patsy’. To delve more deeply into any of these speculative theories without proof is foolhardy entertainment at best. However, to his dying day, Jack Ruby did more than merely suggest not all the facts pertaining to his situation had been resolved. But he was repeatedly denied either oral or written pleas by the Warren Commission to tell his part in the story under oath until his sister, Eileen made it known to the press both she and Ruby wished to have their statements publicly entered as part of the official record.  Reluctantly, Earl Warren and other members of the commission flew to Dallas where they met with Ruby, but emphatically refused to honor his request to be taken to Washington and placed into protective custody.

On Nov. 22 1963, deaf mute Ed Hoffman was one of several hundred witnesses to the murder of the President. Shell-shocked for days afterward, Hoffman eventually managed to corroborate what eye witnesses, Jean Hill and S.M Harlen had already disclosed – though, his story was carefully omitted from the Warren Commission’s findings. In essence, Hoffman claims to have seen the assassin who fired the fatal head shot, not from the book depository but from behind a fence overlooking the grassy knoll in Dealey Plaza. Hoffman further supports that with paralytic disbelief he observed as this man casually disassembled his rifle, placed it into a large suitcase and then handed that suitcase to another waiting man who removed it from the premises. Even more unsettling than Hoffman’s post-assassination account, were the steady stream of obvious precursors heralding that fateful day. One of the most startling involved William Walter, a night clerk on duty inside the FBI headquarters in New Orleans, who came to D.A. Jim Garrison while he was preparing his trial against Clay Shaw. By then, Garrison had become a target of federal spying, his offices bugged. Walter had given Garrison a copy of a Telex message that implicated the FBI in the conspiracy, in part, reading, “The Bureau has determined that a militant revolutionary group may attempt to assassinate President Kennedy on his proposed trip to Dallas Texas.”  This Telex message would later disappear from all ‘official files’, presumably, as it represented an obvious ‘embarrassment’ to the Bureau in their lack of follow-up on such a high-profile matter. Giving the FBI the benefit of the doubt, ignoring the Telex does not explain or excuse another ‘direct order’ issued to the local protective ground services – meant to offer ground cover for the Kennedy motorcade – to stand down. 

Yet, no story is perhaps more bizarre or indicative of a potential cover-up than the one relayed by Rose Cheramie – a woman who turned up inside Mousa General Hospital on Nov. 20, 1963, badly beaten, while claiming to possess intimate knowledge about the assassination before it had actually taken place.  En route to the State Hospital, Cheramie told Officer Francis Fruge she had been traveling from Florida to Dallas to complete a drug deal for Jack Ruby with two anti-Castro Cubans. As Cheramie further relayed to Fruge, the men were not merely well informed of the pending plot against the president but were going to Dallas to partake. Fruge was able to corroborate all of Cheramie’s information, right down to her presence during a meeting between Oswald and Jack Ruby at the Silver Slipper Lounge. Following the assassination, Fruge turned over his notes to the Dallas police and even offered Cheramie as a potential witness. Alas, she was never called to testify; her body later discovered on a lonely road, the apparent victim of a hit and run.  

In the spring of 1969, as D.A. Jim Garrison was beginning his trial of Clay Shaw there was no perceived shortage of eye witnesses to draw upon. Mysteriously, eighteen of them who professed to be able to clearly identify the shooter(s) from the grassy knoll suddenly began to die or disappear.  Some, like Karyn Kupcinet, were found murdered in their homes. Others, like Jack Zangetti and Eddy Benavides were the ‘victims’ of ‘accidental’ gunshot wounds. Still, others like Maurice Gatlin, Lee Bowers and Jim Koethe met with deaths never explained away; accidental falls, bizarre shocks to the system, and/or curiously unexplainable ‘blows to the neck.’ Still others were being bought off and/or vanishing without a trace. But perhaps the most inexplicably bizarre death of them all was David William Ferrie on February 22, 1967.

Ferrie had been a pilot in the Civil Air Patrol Unit and reportedly a member of Shaw’s inner circle of friends. Into this mix of cloak and dagger, Ferrie had also been involved with Guy Banister’s anti-Castro radicals. He knew Lee Harvey Oswald very well.  Following an altercation between Banister and his associate, Jack Martin, Martin made Ferrie’s association with Banister and Oswald a matter of public record, even going so far as to suggest Ferrie had hypnotized Oswald into committing the assassination. Curiously, Ferrie’s library card was discovered on Oswald’s person at the time of Oswald’s incarceration. Throughout his final days, Ferrie was the only alleged participant in the presumed conspiracy to outwardly show any remorse. He very reluctantly agreed to divulge his information only after Garrison’s exposure of the high-profile case made it virtually impossible for him to quietly disappear. But on February 22, 1967, Ferrie did exactly that; his body discovered in his apartment.  As a result, Garrison’s trial was not so much hampered by inefficiencies, botched investigating techniques or recanted testimonies as it was severely betrayed by a darker set of circumstances that sought to eliminate all plausible eye witness accounts.

A year before Ferrie’s apparent ‘suicide’, Dr. Josiah Thompson tried to negotiate a deal with Life Magazine for a book he was writing; applying for fair usage of several enlarged still frames from the 8-mm home movie photographed by Abraham Zapruter. His request was firmly denied and his further attempt to include a visual representation of the assassination (sketched in charcoal by an artist he had paid for), resulted in Life suing for copyright infringement. However, the U.S. district court ruled in Thompson’s favor and shortly thereafter, the Zapruter film attained its cult status with bootlegged copies turning up on the black market. The Zapruter film does, in fact, play a significant role in Oliver Stone’s JFK serving as the centerpiece of an elaborately staged trial as Jim Garrison (Kevin Costner) presents a chronological breakdown of those brief but telling 343 frames of film footage. The real Jim Garrison had similarly subpoenaed Life for the Zapruter film in the trial against Clay Shaw, whom Garrison charged as a co-conspirator in 1967. A prominent Louisiana businessman and founder of the Trade Mart, Shaw admitted during his routine police interrogation he had used the alias, Clay Bertrand; a name repeatedly linked to David Ferrie and Lee Harvey Oswald and readily appearing in several volumes of the Warren Commission Report.

Worse for Shaw’s credibility, a man using the name Clay Bertrand frequently employed oily attorney at law, Dean Andrews Jr. to smooth out minor incidents involving various gay hustlers in New Orleans’ Latin Quarter. Finally, Bertrand was rumored to have contacted Andrews to arrange for Oswald’s army discharge from the Marine Corps. Though ultimately acquitted of all charges, the stain on Shaw’s reputation was never entirely expunged; a blemish proven as fact when former Director of the CIA, Richard Helms’ under oath in 1979 gave testimony tying Shaw to the CIA – a crucial fact Garrison had already unearthed during his prosecution of Shaw but that Shaw emphatically had denied under oath. Garrison eventually penned his own account of his investigation and the subsequent trial, entitled On the Trail of the Assassins. His book would serve as the primary source material for Oliver Stone’s JFK. Those particularly outraged with Stone’s perceived cheek in rehashing a thirty-year-old crime, readily dismissed his film as pure bunk. The Kennedy clan left the United States at the time of JFK’s premiere – presumably to avoid the hailstorm of undo publicity sure to follow. However, not all press garnered was negative. Though Newsweek magazine published an incendiary cover story – claiming the film and its director were ‘not to be trusted’, inside the issue, Newsweek’s own film critic, David Ansen declared, “My advice is don’t believe anyone who tells you this film is hogwash!”

For the most part, Stone’s dramatization is derived from intense research and his ingenious ability to assimilate a mountain of facts into this compendium all-star critique, also drawing on several conspiracy theorist books, vintage press and new interviews with Garrison and other surviving members intimately involved in the criminal investigation. At the heart of Stone’s counter-theory to the Warren Report is the hypothesis the military industrial complex – fueled by an escalated budgetary need to invade southeast Asia, and in cahoots with the CIA - were the instigators of a coup d’etat to reverse Kennedy’s plans to pull out of Viet Nam; a decision that would have put a period to excessive military spending. It is important to note that although much of JFK is based on irrefutable facts, the film does take certain artistic liberties in its translation from fact to ‘fiction’; most notably, in the creation of Willie O’Keefe (Kevin Bacon); a homosexual prisoner who alleged to D.A. Garrison an ongoing sexual liaison with Clay Shaw (Tommy Lee Jones).

O’Keefe is a compendium of various young men with whom the real Shaw is rumored to have had sexual relations. Director, Stone has always maintained O’Keefe was based on recollections from Shaw’s associate, Perry Russo (who appears as himself, briefly in the scene at Napoleon’s bar immediately following the President’s assassination) and who attended parties at Shaw’s residence where he personally witnessed him involved, not only with many young men, but also with David Ferrie and Lee Harvey Oswald. Due, in part, to his impassioned hatred for Kennedy, Russo’s testimony was never considered unreliable at trial. While the critics attacked such alterations to the truth in, J.F.K., as perhaps pointing to more glaring fabrications made by Stone for the pure purposes of ‘entertainment’, on practically every level Stone’s movie managed to debunk the Warren Commission’s facts as mere conjecture – not even soundly formulated – and in some cases, obviously fabricated. 

If only for the damage done by the Zapruter film (unequivocally illustrating a fatal kill shot from a low trajectory in front of the motorcade), Stone assumptions about a second assassin would already be solidly grounded. Yet, if the public is to continue believing the lone gunman theory, then federal ineptitude during the initial investigation can no longer be ignored either: Lyndon Johnson’s immediate instructions to rebuild the bloody motorcade limousine, ordering the President’s body moved before an official autopsy in Dallas could be finalized, sending Governor Connelly’s bloody suit to the cleaners, and finally, the overwhelming discrepancies between these two sets of autopsies (the first, inconclusive in Dallas; the second, doctored up in Washington) leaves many gaping holes in what should have otherwise been a routine examination with conclusive evidence in support of the Warren Commission Report. And then, there is The Magic Bullet Theory, suggesting one pristine bullet made all the wounds in Kennedy and Connelly before being discovered on a stretcher at Parkland Memorial Hospital.  A mountain of ballistic data derived from similarly tested bullets fired into human cadavers has disproven Arlen Specter’s theory. That, Garrison was repeatedly denied access to interrogate Frank Sturges, Earl Warren, Allan Dulles, or any of the other members of the committee responsible for these ‘findings’ speaks to an insidious cover-up.

The wilder theories that have surfaced since Kennedy’s time have only further muddied these waters – some of which Oliver Stone crystalizes with startling clarity in JFK. If Oliver Stone had offered nothing but conjecture, then his contributions could have so easily been dismissed as voodoo logic for the express purpose to shock and entertain. But Stone has wrapped his speculations in cold hard facts that are indisputable. Clay Shaw perjured himself on the witness stand.  In 1979, four years after Shaw’s death, reportedly from lung cancer (though no autopsy was allowed either to confirm or deny his cause of death), during a congressional investigation, Director of Covert Operations, Richard Helms opening admitted under oath Shaw had worked for the CIA – a fact Garrison exposed at trial. Helms further denoted a ‘probable conspiracy’, even going so far to make a recommendation for further review by the U.S. Justice Department.

Until Oliver Stone’s JFK the Justice Department was content to ignore these findings and do nothing. They no longer possess such a luxury. Since JFK, Stone has produced a full-fledged documentary of his own, ‘Beyond JFK’ with expert testimonials from survivors that further unearths just how corrupt and shadowy the ‘official’ investigation into the president’s murder had been. As Oliver Stone reiterated in the epitaph to JFK – ‘the past is prologue.’ Like D.A. Jim Garrison before him, with this movie, Stone sought to cast a light upon one of the darkest moments in American history, to aggressively confront the evil in Dealey and masking of it by the Washington establishment, complicit in its design, and, finally, to admonish those who continued to support such a brutally misguided narrative about what actually occurred on that fateful afternoon. The seismic shift in public interest in the case for truth and justice here has been but one positive outcome since to pass. It is this reviewer’s fervent hope someday Oliver Stone will uncover the rest.

JFK is blessed with a spectacular who’s who of stellar talent; Kevin Costner – rarely better, as D.A. Jim Garrison; Sissy Spacek as his devoted wife, Liz, and Gary Oldman, a dead ringer for Lee Harvey Oswald, headlining a cast that includes Joe Pesci (David Ferrie), Tommy Lee Jones (Clay Shaw), Ed Asner (Guy Bannister), Jack Lemmon (Jack Martin), Michael Rooker (Bill Broussard), Laurie Metcalfe (Suzie Cox), John Candy (Dean Andrews), Walter Matthau (Huey P. Long), and, Donald Sutherland (X), among others. Miraculously, the picture is never hampered by its ‘look who’s here’ cameo gallery of stars; each doing some of the most credible work in their respectively long and distinguished careers. Oliver Stone’s ace in the hole is undeniably Kevin Costner who, while far too young to be Garrison, nevertheless offers us the intense portrait of a man besought by conflict and turmoil on all sides; devoted to the truth above all else, and yet, faced with doubt and pressuring influences both from without and within.  The screenplay, co-written by Stone and Zachary Sklar is a miracle of concision, touching upon virtually every alternative to the Warren Commission Report; its theorizations fact-based and extremely well-grounded. Stone traverses the labyrinth where truth is decidedly stranger than fiction, yet with a lithe and uncomplicated cinematic style, capable of distilling immense clarity from the murky conundrum.  Ultimately, Stone creates more smoke than fire from this exposé; and yet, he succinctly assimilates a massive amount of information in an equally lengthy excursion that never unravels into rank confusion or abject tedium. If JFK is the story that won’t go away, then Stone’s movie is perhaps the best chance anyone has of exposing the enigma of the assassination. Without question, it is the movie for which Oliver Stone will likely forever be known by generations yet to follow.

Curious, Warner Home Video, currently celebrating its 100^th anniversary in picture-making, should choose to farm out one of its greatest movies ever to Shout! Factory for its 4K UHD Blu-ray debut. Although, given the picture’s controversy (for daring to speak the truth), perhaps, the distancing is deliberate. Whatever the executive logic behind it, the results speak for themselves. Derived from an OCN, Warner has provided high-quality masters of both the director’s and theatrical cuts of Oliver Stone’s magnum opus. A bit more curious – only the director’s cut actually gets a native 4K release. The theatrical cut, while remastered from a 4K scan, only warrants a standard Blu.  This will undoubtedly outrage diehard fans. The director’s cut is far more comprehensive and definitely the way to go. How does it look? In both cases, utterly magnificent. The 4K UHD of the director’s cut is a revelation. Warner Home Video’s old Blu-ray looks tired and careworn beside this reissue. Color fidelity and saturation will blow you away. Stone’s stylized palette, along with the archival/vintage footage has never looked this solid. Contrast is superb. Finite film grain comes to the forefront here in a way that is both pleasing and indigenous to its source. The audio here is presented in both the original 2.0 theatrical DTS and 5.1 DTS home video. Comparing audio to the previous WB digi-book Blu release, it sounds the same. Would JFK have benefited from a 7.1 Dolby Atmos? Debatable. We don’t get it here, so no quibbling. All 3 versions come with Oliver Stone’s audio commentary recorded back in the mid-1990’s. What a gorgeous presentation, elevating the craftsmanship in Robert Richardson’s cinematography.

Shout! has jam-packed this set with a ton of goodies, both vintage and brand new, surely to excite the collector and JFK aficionado. Sorely missed is ‘Beyond JFK’ – the doc that was included on Warner’s old Blu. In its absence, Shout! offers some considerable ‘new to Blu’ junkets including new interviews with Oliver Stone, Robert Richardson, editor, Hank Corwin, co-producer, Clayton Townsend, location manager, Patty Doherty, and, SFX artist, Gordon J. Smith.  Regurgitated from Warner’s Blu, 12 deleted scenes with or without Stone’s commentary, still looking incredibly rough for a movie of this vintage.  There’s also, two featurettes produced 10 years after the movie, updating what was ‘then’ known about the assassination, as well as reflections on Fletcher Prouty; a stills gallery and theatrical trailer. Bottom line:  JFK remains one of the greatest movies of all time. Shout! and Warner Home Video have conspired on a grand 4K release with ‘event styled’ packaging and lots of extra features to enthrall. But don’t pitch your old Warner digi-book yet. You’ll need it for the ‘Beyond JFK’ doc. Otherwise, very highly recommended!

FILM RATING (out of 5 - 5 being the best)

5+

VIDEO/AUDIO

4K – 5+

Standard Blu – 5

EXTRAS

4.5