Executive Action

Directed by David Miller

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Product Description

Predecessor to Oliver Stone's 'JFK' this film was one of the first to present an alternative to the Warren Report version of events. Mixing narriative segments with newsreel footage, the film tells the story of a group of powerful men who plot the assasination. First they must recruit and train a shooter, then frame Lee Harvey Oswald. A must-see for history buffs and conspiracy theorists, some credit this film with re-opening the debate about Kennedy's assasination.

Product Details

Amazon Sales Rank: #19477 in DVD
Brand: Warner Brothers
Model: 117747
Released on: 2007-10-23
Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Aspect ratio: 1.66:1
Number of discs: 1
Formats: Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
Original language: English
Subtitled in: English, French
Dimensions: .25 pounds
Running time: 91 minutes

Features

Predecessor to Oliver Stone's 'JFK' this film was one of the first to present an alternative to the Warren Report version of events. Mixing narriative segments with newsreel footage, the film tells the story of a group of powerful men who plot the assasination. First they must recruit and train a shooter, then frame Lee Harvey Oswald. A must-see for history buffs and conspiracy theorists, some cre

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com
As JFK-conspiracy movies go, Executive Action is distinguished by being one of the earliest and one of the best. This speculative drama draws together some of the theories floating around in 1973 and lay them out in dry, unadorned fashion. At the center of the conspiracy is a group of right-wing muckymucks who quietly plan the assassination of the president (thanks to their fears about Vietnam, civil rights, and whatever else might be handy). Burt Lancaster is the most prominent name in the cast, although the film gets much of its gravity from the weathered presence of Robert Ryan, the superb character actor who died not long after completing the project. Will Geer and John Anderson are also in on the plot. Scripted by Hollywood pro (and former blacklistee) Dalton Trumbo, the film is unrelentingly grim, but there's something about its very flatness that makes it that much eerier. Oliver Stone would take the opposite approach in his pinwheeling JFK, but this simple accounting is just as creepy. --Robert Horton

Customer Reviews

Most helpful customer reviews

45 of 48 people found the following review helpful.
Chillingly On Target!
By Mcgivern Owen L
Executive Action is about the conspiracy to assassinate President John F. Kennedy. The title refers to covert organizations euphemism for selected killings. Distinctions are important because EA does not try to prove that a deadly plot existed. EA is ABOUT the conspiracy itself! The pace is slow and chillingly deliberate. The film is totally free of excess and editorial. The conspirators are so calm, the dialog so matter of fact that the viewer could almost be eavesdropping on casual conversation between friends. Their motivation lay in Kennedy s failure to fully support the Bay of Pigs invasion, a nuclear treaty with Russia and his support of Civil Rights. Then there is Topic # 1-J.F.K.s apparent (!) intention to begin withdrawing troops from Vietnam in 1965. Profits decline in peacetime! Two veteran actors, Robert Ryan and Burt Lancaster are the right wing fanatics who decide to take 'Executive action" against the President. Both are excellent, especially the cynical Ryan. It is their calm "everyone is expendable" iciness that bites to the bone. They have "Done this Before". To them there is no difference between eliminating JFK or dispatching a troublesome Third World dictator. These string-pullers calmly put together a hit team as casually as forming a new finance department. There are two significant details: 1) there were not 1 but 3 shooters in Dallas that day and 2) the murder of Lee Harvey Oswald is treated as an unplanned afterthought. A strong point is the intermingling of historical documentary form the early 60s, which gives EA body and context. A weak point is the supporting cast. The supposedly professional assassins look liked they were drafted from the company softball team. The role of strip club owner Jack Ruby would be laughable if he had not been so important in real life. EA is a first rate low key film that failed to win recognition when it was first released. Conspiracy fans and conspiracy haters alike are encouraged to watch EA. Those who can?t learn anything will at least be entertained. A final thought. EA would have been ideal for a black and white format. It's curious the producers chose to colorize such a somber film.

85 of 98 people found the following review helpful.
Overlooked but far more persuasive than JFK
By Jeffrey Ellis
Executive Action is a stark, low budget docudrama about the assasination of John F. Kennedy. We watch as a cabal of old, rich white man plot the death of JFK and, in a starkly matter-of-fact way, the film details how they pulled it off. As opposed to Oliver Stone's later JFK, Executive Action goes to great pains to remain a rather cold recreation. Though this makes the film far more somber than Stone's, it also makes for a far more persuasive case. By not sensationalizing or resorting to emotional trickey, Executive Action forces you to consider the evidence for a conspiracy and, even if you're a skeptic like me, by the end of this film, you have to admit that there is a great deal of credible, if circumstancial, evidence to support the idea of a conspiracy. The conspirators, themselves, are deliberately kept obscure. We learn little about their backgrounds or individual personalities and, while some might complain that Executive Action doesn't contain any performances as crazed as say Joe Pesci in Stone's film, it actually works to help Executive Action avoid the hysterically paranoid feeling that Stone wallowed in. Whereas I think JFK ultimately caused more people to dismiss the idea of a conspiracy than accept it, Executive Action is powerfully persuasive. Every effort has been made to maintain a sense of realism. As well, Executive Action features the final performance of the great Robert Ryan. Though, unlike co-star Burt Lancaster, Ryan's become somewhat forgotten today, he was one of the braver movie actors working in the Hollywood of the '40s and '50s. He was a committed activist who was willing to take chances with his films if he believed in the message. Its obvious that this was a project that both he and Lancaster felt very deeply about and there's something gratifying in the fact that both of these very missed actors managed to create a message movie that actually manages to persuasively argue for its message. Lancaster and Ryan were represenatives of a courage that doesn't seem to have survived in today's Hollywood and, whether you agree with them or not, its hard not to respect the body of work they fought so hard to create.

I have to admit that I've never been a big believer in conspiracy theories. I've never believed there were aliens hidden away in government hangars, never feared the Trialateral Commission, and I've always thought that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. Call me a skeptic but I've always felt that conspiracy theories draw their strength from people being too frightened to accept that on the whole, we're all at the mercy of random fate. That being said, let me also admit that if any film could convince me to reexamine my disbelief, it would have to be Executive Action.

20 of 20 people found the following review helpful.
Maltin bombed on this one
By Dan
I almost didn't watch this movie when I saw Leonard Maltin had rated it a "Bomb," but I'm glad I did. I agree that the pace early on could have been quicker, but overall the movie presented its theory pretty well.

While JFK was a mystery investigating a murder, this is a step-by-step recreation of how the crime might have happened. I'm not a conspiracy buff, and I felt this film presented some of the theories more clearly than did JFK, and seemed to make a better attempt at staying historically accurate