JFK: One Day in America

I was impressed with how this documentary was put together. The interviews with secret service men, journalists and actual hours of footage gave an in depth look at the events of the day that changed America and the political landscape. I appreciate that the feature did not try to push Lee Harvey Oswald as the only shooter as this version is simply not true. Facts and commonsense show he was not a lone gunman who acted alone. But putting that aside, this feature moves away from this and shows the footage, events and reactions of the event. It lives up to its title and description which is to capture the day and events unfolded. I feel we should not get too hung up or fixated on the conspiracy because it was covered up and they want to keep it that way because they got away it. I am skeptical a little with how Jack Ruby was portrayed as someone who loved the Kennedy's and conveniently was able to access the police station which held Oswald. But again it could have been sloppy police work, the day was full of sloppy protection and police work. Too many questions that did not get answered. Overall a well put together feature that captured the shocking events of the day.

The best part of this series is the interviews with actual participants and witnesses of that fateful day in Dallas, though by this time, so distant from those events, most seem somewhat dispassionate, and their stories, retold probably hundreds of times, sometimes take on the suggestion of a melodramatic script. Completely understandable, of course. How many docs have they been in? The constant, slow, morbid funeral home dirge in the background is laughably heavy handed.

You'd think there's nothing left to say about this subject; no new information to offer, and no new footage to be seen. But what this series has done is reprehensible. They've taken lots of the now-exhausted familiar footage of that day and falsified it with colorization. Yes, even videotape material has been infected with this falsification that has been used to attack any number of black and white films and still photographs that can be seen on the internet and other cable TV offerings.

So if every frame of a scene has been tampered with, how much trust is deserved? They also did an extremely cowardly act; the pivot point of the whole real-life incident; the Zapruder film is shown, everybody's seen it a thousand times, so we know what the fatal shot looks like. BUT HERE, IT'S BEEN REMOVED. I guess with CGI or something, so it runs smooth, but terrible or not, it's vital to show it. The audience is being protected. It's being infantalized. There are many, better documentaries on this event all ready made.

This is just your usual run of the mill JFK documentary. Though it has people who are still alive and were either part of the Government at that time, involved in the City of Dallas, or had a connection with Oswald. National Geographic has added color to some of the archival footage, which didn't needed to be done but whatever.

There's not much that is really uncovered here that is new, there is plenty of information left out. Really nothing in it is new. We all know that this year marked the release of the Additional Documents Release starting in April-Aug, which is all available on line through the National Archives website.

It is worth giving it a watch, but don't expect to learn any new information or details. This is still one well kept secret.

This was good. Like most documentaries (especially multi-part docs) I felt it was a little slow moving and drawn out, but that pacing also matched the somber tone throughout so perhaps it was intentional.

I learned some things while watching it. I'm sure others were aware that Oswald also shot and killed Dallas cop that day who was trying to apprehend him. If I knew that once, surely I'd forgotten it. I also didn't know that Kennedy was buried on JFK Jrs third birthday That fact makes his iconic salute of the casket all the more painful.

The deceased policemen aside, the Dallas cops don't come off too well in this story. How they ever let Jack Ruby hang around that basement and get so close to Oswald is beyond me. I understand why some people are convinced there was a conspiracy (I don't know nearly enough about it to even venture an opinion) because the only other explanation is complete and utter incompetency).

Whether you lived through that day or not, if you have interest in US history, especially told through eye witnesses, I'd recommend this documentary production by Nat Geo.

Lies That Have Been Proven As Lies First, this was created by National Geographic, so it's no surprise that it's highly sanitised. Second, if you are going to have colour footage, let it ALL be in colour - colourise all of it, not just parts.

Whilst the interviews were interesting, it was very clear they had been rehearsed for 6 decades and obvious the people are not telling the whole story.

What Is surprising is that with all the information that was recently redacted, with Jackie Kennedy's own words, with the Laws of Physics, with all the forensic science and even the three different caskets shown in this series NG would still perpetuate the same story from 22NOV63. Also surprisingly they allowed the footage of people talking about the Xd by amazon and Xd by amazon; and the man that said Congress did it. As Jackie Kennedy said to Mrs. Johnson when asked if she wanted to change her clothes "No. Let THEM see what THEY have done.