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Executive Action

Actor(s): Burt Lancaster, Robert Ryan, Will Geer, Gilbert Green, John Anderson
Director(s): David Miller
2

Movie Details

MPAA Rating: PG
Content Advisory: Violence, Adult Situations, Questionable for Children
Movie Release: 1973
DVD Release: 10/23/2007
Format: DVD - Color,Soft-Matted WSE for 16x9 TV
Edition: Dual Layered
Audio Tracks: English
Subtitles: English, French
SwapaDVD Credits: 1
Number of Discs: 1
Run Time: 1 hrs 31 mins
Studio: Warner Home Video
Members Wishing: 5
Genres: Historical Film, Thriller, Docudrama, Political Thriller, Paranoid Thriller

DVD Synopsis

If you think that Oliver Stone invented the "political paranoia" movie, take a glance at Executive Action sometime. Based on Mark Lane's -Rush to Judgment, the conspiracy theorist's bible, Executive Action perpetuates the popular urban legend that John F. Kennedy was assassinated at the behest of a right-wing cartel with military and industrial interests. The film further hypothesizes that Lee Harvey Oswald not only didn't pull the trigger, but was also set up as a disposable dupe (this notion wasn't even new in 1973). Burt Lancaster, Robert Ryan and Will Geer play the sinister conspirators. In the film's coda, still photos of 18 witnesses to the assassination are shown, while the accompanying text informs us that all of these people had died between 1963 and 1973. We are further told that the odds against this coincidence are one in a trillion. When Oliver Stone's thematically similar JFK came out in 1991, viewers with long memories were quick to notice the eerie similarities between the Stone film and Executive Action -- right down to choice of camera angles. Hmmm....a conspiracy, perhaps? ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Actors

Burt Lancaster - Farrington
Robert Ryan - Foster
Will Geer - Ferguson
Gilbert Green - Paulitz
John Anderson - Halliday
Deanna Darrin - Stripper
James MacColl - Oswald Imposter

Member Movie Reviews

Damian M. (ratchet) wrote on 3/11/2009...

A movies that blends actual news footage of the Kennedy assassination with scripted film. May be the earliest movie I have seen so intertwine the two. The script follows the (for the most part plausible) conspiracy theory that JFK's assassination was planned by a group of ultra-rich right-wing industrialists. I think much of what caused JFK's death did have to do with his desire to pull out of VietNam and that Oswald was obviously a patsy. But Kennedy had upset the Insiders, and the Insiders only use the right-wing/left-wing dichotomy in a strategy of divide and conquer on the rest of us in order to consolidate their power. If the Insiders succeeded in 1963, just imagine how much better they are at it today. (They're still pretty sloppy - Gordon Kahl, Ruby Ridge, Waco, Vince Foster, Oklahoma City/Ken Trentadue, etc.) To note, this movie prophetically forecasts the population of the third world in 2000 at 7 billion, 'Most of them Yellow, Brown or Black. All hungry and all determined to love; they'll swarm out of their breeding grounds into Europe and America.'