Executive Action (1973)

A lot more amusing than I thought it would be.

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

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.

If it's a given that infamous international events - like the assassination of President John F. Kennedy - which have never been fully satisfactorily explained are fair game for conspiracy theorists then Executive Action has as much right as any other to its moment in the sun. The first obligation of any film expounding a conspiracy is plausibility and the movie asserts nothing that is beyond the capabilities of a well- to-highly organised group of like-minded people with virtually unlimited funds and access to a network of highly-skilled professional assassins. in saying this I may have underlined just a fraction of the difficulties faced by any group of fanatics who have no use for a democratic form of government. If we put this to one side we are left with some excellent performances. If Robert Ryan is the best actor overall by a country mile - and here I'm basing judgment on a lifetime career - then Burt Lancaster and Will Geer are certainly fit to be mentioned in the same breath. All in all a provocative and entertaining film.

Executive Action is directed by David Miller and written by Dalton Trumbo, Donald Freed and Mark Lane. It stars Burt Lancaster, Robert Ryan, Will Geer, Gilbert Green and John Anderson. Music is by Randy Edelman and cinematography by Robert Steadman.In essence it's a film that is offering up a different theory to the Warren Commission's report that ruled Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in assassinating John F. Kennedy. Plot has Lancaster and Ryan as shady conspirators who plot the downfall of JFK on that fateful day November 22nd 1963. There's lots of talking, with the actors chewing into the dialogue whilst brooding considerably, their motives explained clearly, the framing of Oswald brought to life, and it rounds up to a triple gunmen scenario. We then get a startling revelation about what befell a number of eyewitnesses from that infamous day.It's engrossing without being truly riveting, but the cast make it worth time spent. While if you like to buy into the conspiracy theory surrounding the assassination? Then it carries some extra entertainment value. 7/10

Although this film has been eclipsed by Oliver Stone's JFK, Executive Action points to an alternative view of the Kennedy Assassination. Names are definitely changed to protect the innocent or the falsely accused depending on your point of view.The conspiracy is hatched in the study of Robert Ryan who is an unnamed right-wing millionaire concerned about the direction of policy the Kennedy administration is taking. Three issues are of concern, the negotiations for a nuclear test ban treaty with the Russians, the growing civil rights movement which Kennedy was now embracing, and the Vietnam War. Another of the concerned citizens is Will Geer playing your stereotypical right-wing oil millionaire. He's concerned about the oil depletion allowance that has made him the super rich guy that he is. Geer's character is clearly based on H.L. Hunt.Burt Lancaster is the operations guy, he's got a history of black ops for the government and for private citizens like Geer. He puts together the shooters and he's got a plan to set up a patsy in Lee Harvey Oswald.Most people in the USA have a casual familiarity with the bare-bones facts of the Kennedy Assassination so the film will come in for its share of criticism. The film is based on a book by Mark Lane who is a Kennedy Assassination specialist and left-wing gadfly. That in and of itself is guaranteed to give the film its detractors.At least in two areas the assassination failed to do what it set out to accomplish. Kennedy become a martyr and the Texas and Southern Vice President who succeeded him, Lyndon B. Johnson pushed the civil rights and voting rights legislation that changed America forever. The nuclear test ban treaty was never abrogated, no one ever raised the possibility.JFK's demise never accomplished what they wanted, preservation of their little right-wing world. As for the film, Executive Action gives a plausible theory of the assassination, but nothing more.