JFK Revisited: Through The Looking Glass Review

In an electric flurry of footage from the news– Cronkite making a fuss of his brow, Oswald playing the patsy, Jack Ruby loose in the Dallas police department, the undiluted shocking cosmic shock of Zapruder's camerathe whole thing is flooding back. Who will not remember the day they watched the film of Oliver Stone's JFK?

In this captivating, yet not remarkable sister document the author has retreated towards the right and left the masterful thriller of 1991, expanding on his multiple-shooter theory, his magical bullet, his cabals made up of CIA-backed Cuban hotheads. "Massive inconsistent theories," he whispers, shaking his head in disbelief as unwavering experts (of mixed credibility) are arguing about fake autopsies and book depository staircases. It's like a return tour, with only the hit: the floorplans diagrams, and the ballistics expert's rebuttal tests. Be it as you will, Stone can sure mount an argument. In the age of the real-crime podcast as well as the serial Netflix infractions this is the forensic sizzle the virtuoso of conspiracy.

Similar to Kevin Costner's story as an angry the DA Jim Garrison, the film is slicing in two parts. The first, which is narrated by the stupor of Whoopi Goldberg, tackles the assassination and the immediate consequences. The documentarian's goal is achieved. Ineptitude or a cover-up it is clear in doubt that the 1964 Warren Report has more holes than salt shakers. And there is the overwhelming feeling of a world being thrown out of kilter by the reports that echo across Dealey Plaza.

In the midst of the frenzied rush of theories and information there are opportunities that go unnoticed.

It's then head-first into the savage lasagne of the grand picture, being pushed by the gritty tone that is Donald Sutherland (X stills marks the scene). What Stone has now declared as the "conspiracy factual evidence" from"the" Bay Of Pigs, Vietnam and the shambolic military-industrial complex with no opposing arguments to stop the flow of evidence.

In the midst of the frantic rush of theory and information the chances are lost. A chance to take a look back and contemplate how the JFK film itself influenced the public's opinion, or Stone's place in JFK archaeology is a nagging obsession which keeps him exploring. There is a resentment in his film of 1991 about America's corrupted heart that is more powerful than ever but he doesn't ask what the murder of JFK might mean in the QAnon truth-torching in 2021. There are times when you wonder whether he's stuck in the past.