JFK: Destiny Betrayed

Oliver Stones enduring obsession with John Kennedy has resulted in this new four part documentary that features narration from Whoopi Goldberg, Donald Sutherland ( who as the mysterious character X in Oliver Stones 1991 film JFK, delivered a lengthy and explosive monologue about a massive conspiracy to a flabbergasted Jim Garrison, played by Kevin Costner) and interviews with Robert Kennedy Jnr and various others who weren't old enough or even alive when the assassination took place. The problem with this doc, as was definitely the problem with JFK the film, is that while well made and rather riveting, its based on a series of connect the dot coincidences mixed with facts but also a number of dubious assumptions mixed with even more dubious theories, none of which add up to one coming to any definite conclusions one way or the other. It takes every sinister turn it can take, the CIA, the tension with the Soviet Union, the conflict of interest amongst his own administration regarding going deeper into the Vietnam conflict, even the mafia get a mention. Lots of supposed reasons, lots of supposed suspects, lots of cloak and daggers and smoke and mirrors but it really cannot make any definitive statement one way or the other.

Jim Garrison, the hero of JFK 1991, was played admirably as a noble everyman by Kevin Costner. In reality, he was a dangerous fruit loop who arrested people without just cause, appeared on the Johnny Carson show, and even had witnesses hypnotized in a crazy bid to get them to say what he wanted them to say. The Warren Commission, which was portrayed as a group of conspirators, concluded that one rifle fired the two bullets. There was no magic bullet as the Secret Service man was not seated directly in front of the president; the car seats weren't situated that way. Lee Harvey Oswald was a communist sympathizer fantasist who attempted to assassinate another government figure some years before, but missed his mark when he fired. He wanted the notoriety of killing a public figure. The bullets WERE fired from overhead. People love a good conspiracy, and JKF was so loved, many people just would not and will not accept that his death could be so mundane and simple as a lone gunman just decided to kill him. But i believe that is what happened and the evidence dictates that.

One of Oliver Stone's most remarkable works. This four-episode documentary contains a great deal of information and it is a work of love and conviction. Over the decades, many researchers have independently contributed to unearth and unravel the complicated mess behind JFK's assassination. Stone's historical vision -which has matured over the years, along with his cinematic- here is backed by James DiEugenio's invaluable research on the subject. The result is a work which, not only brings valuable light into the mechanism behind the conspiracy, the assassination and the subsequent coverup, but which also reflects on the effects and consequences both culturally and politically for the US and the world.

It's unfortunate that the docuseries is not easily available on the more popular streaming platforms (with the exception of rent/buy in Amazon). It really should be seen and discussed by a wide public, particularly the younger generations.

Viewers of Oliver Stone's 1991 polemical blockbuster all those years ago were left, like me, with a sense of something being a bit off but with no facts to get our teeth into. This miniseries blows the whole conspiracy theory wide open, for even the most conspiracy-jaded folk.

JFK- Destiny Betrayed: elegantly argued, historically contextualised, clinically put together. No other director is as persuasive as Oliver Stone and this docu-series sees him at the top of his game. Miss it at your very real peril. Freedom and democracy are at stake......

This is a methodical analysis of both the physical circumstances and political environment before and after the assassination.

The tentative conclusions reached by Stone are compelling. When combined with the details surrounding Robert Kennedy's assassination they are overwhelmingly so.

Some right wing ideologues appear to criticise Stone, not for being inaccurate, but for being 'un-American'. For example, there is a review here which exemplifies this attitude by claiming that Kennedy was a 'traitor'.

So much for democracy.

With this backdrop it is easy to see why Trump stopped the release of the final tranche of documents relating to the assassination. Who would want to be the person to reveal to the world that American institutions, with the complicity of powerful economic and political ideologues, murdered their own President.

For those who don't know, this is the 4 hour expanded edition of JFK Revisited: Through the Looking Glass. Much of the same aspects of the assassination are discussed here, just in more detail. There are also some that weren't mentioned in Revisited. Such as the Harper Fragment and Kennedy's foreign policy with Africa. However, while Revisited was a more appropriate length, and flowed better, this version has more issues. Mostly the structure and editing. Because it cuts back and forth between topics that don't connect and aren't relevant to the assassination. Mostly Kennedy's foreign policy. As someone who's studied the assassination for 8 years, I was let down by this. To be clear, I don't think this version is awful. Far from it. But it has more issues than JFK Revisited. Though that version is much easier for the average viewer to understand. This is version goes into far more detail.