Movies

MOVIES

Executive Action

I stumbled across one of the best entertainment deals in town the other day. It's the Pay for One Movie and See Four Plan at that fabulous, gaudy consumer heaven -- Briarwood. "The Movies" is four theaters with one ticket booth. Just pay $2.00, walk in and see any or all of the four films. (Apparently) the idea is that while Mom is shopping for hours on end, the whole family can be safely stashed at the moving pictures. The range of films offered is designed to appeal to the whole family. For the little ones, there is a Walt Disney special -- That Darn Cat. Idealistic teenagers can take in Billy Jack. And for those members of the family who like both murder mysteries and politics, there is Executive Action - a dramatic interpretation of the conspiracy theory of the Kennedy assassination.

Of course all good deals have their drawbacks, and the catch to this one is that you have to go to Briarwood. I don't know about you, but for me it is the sort of place where I'm embarrassed to see someone I know and feel obligated to ask what they are doing there. This enclosed futuristic shopping center is a real death blow to the small town atmosphere of Ann Arbor. How ridiculous to put such an enormous physical distance between residences and shopping districts. The place is an excessive monument to consumerism, and to walk around it makes you feel obligated to get in the swing of things and buy something. If this is what we must do to participate in the future, I'm moving to the past.

My mom lives in California and so I didn't have to wait for her to finish shopping and saw only Executive Action. This is the work of a number of leftist actors, writers and others who used a dramatic narrative structure as the means to bring out questions regarding John F. Kennedy's assassination. The film is from a story by Mark Lane, author of Rush to Judgement, one of the first, finest and most thorough critical analyses of the Warren Commission's pat conclusions regarding the assassination. The screenplay was done by the extremely gifted Dalton Trumbo, a brilliant screenwriter who was blacklisted in the 1950's along with nine other prominent Hollywood directors and writers. His recent work includes writing and directing a film from his novel Johnny Got His Gun. The actors include luminaries Will Geer, Robert Ryan and Burt Lancaster.

So you would think the film would be good. I wanted to like it but found it immensely disappointing. It lacks the convincing analysis of Mark Lane's investigation. It is replete with loose ends that leave you hanging at its conclusion. The pace of the film is amateurish and slow, which is particularly disappointing coming as it does from a screenwriter as experienced as Dalton Trumbo. It has a chintzy atmosphere to it, the result of a low budget attempt on a big budget project. It is a lame compromise between a traditional narrative and a new form of story intercut with news footage to illustrate the mood of the early sixties.

The film is obviously the work of sincere and committed liberals who used the medium of their profession -- film -- to try and educate a large number of people about an event of continuing significance. A high level conspiracy to kill Kennedy is even more credible now amidst the dirty dealing of Watergate. The "isolated nut" theory of the Warren Commission is far too simple an answer, and it rests on very shaky evidence. Mark Lane's written work has strong empirical findings regarding the conspiratorial connection between the monied elite, the CIA and the FBI. It is so regrettable that the filmmakers made such an unconvincing thriller out of this actually quite believable sage of American politics.

-- Ellen Frank

"O Lord Most High, Creator of the Cosmos, Spinner of Galaxies, Soul of Electromagnetic Waves, Inhaler and Exhaler of Inconceivable Volumes of Vacuum, Spitter of Fire and Rock, Trifler with Millennia -- what could we do for Thee that Thou couldst not do for Thyself one octillion times better? Nothing. What could we do or say that could possibly interest Thee? Nothing. Oh, Mankind, rejoice in the apathy of our Creator, for it makes us free and truthful and dignified at last. No longer can a fool like Malachi Constant point to a ridiculous accident of good luck and say, 'Somebody up there likes me.' And no longer can a tyrant say, 'God wants this or that to happen, and anybody who doesn't help this or that to happen is against God.' O Lord Most High, what a glorious weapon is Thy Apathy, for we have unsheathed it, have thrust and slashed mightily with it, and the claptrap that has so often enslaved us or driven us into the madhouse lies slain!"

-- The Reverend C. Horner Redwine

(from The Sirens of Titan, by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.)

THE BLIND PIG paid for this space