Nayan Gough
A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.
Tyreece Hulme
One of the best movies of the year! Incredible from the beginning to the end.
Rosie Searle
It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.
David Spear
So after Oswald fired his first shot, Hickey identified that JFK was shot, looked up at the 6th floor, reached down for the AR-15, lifted it from his car floor, released the safety, turned the rifle toward JFK rather than the 6th floor, and accidentally shoots JFK.And he does all this in under 6 seconds! Yeah, right. The movie also doesn't talk about the type of bullet the AR-15 fires and if there is any indication of that bullet entering the back of JFK's head at the proper angle. This theory is so bad that I suspect it is a deliberate fake that can be proven wrong. I'm sure the assassination was a conspiracy, but not this.
Michael Wehle
This film was not worth an hour and a half of my time. There's about 20 minutes of material stretched with endless repetition and reenactments so it'll be suitable for broadcast with commercial interruptions every ten minutes. The constant recitation of what was just said a few minutes before gave me vertigo. If you *must* watch this movie you may want to do so in five or ten minute stretches.Howard Donahue's thesis is an interesting one, I think Donahue did solid work in researching it and Menninger lays it out well in Mortal Error. The Smoking Gun, however, fails to adequately explain Colin McLaren's presence, and what if anything he added to Donahue and Menninger's work.
the_cyberpunk
This "documentary" is another travesty perpetrated by the Discovery Channel, and should be taken about as seriously as their farces such as "Eaten Alive" and that balderdash about a prehistoric shark.In one hand they'll tell you the primary author of this cockamamie theory is a firearms expert, with impeccable credentials, and then in the next they'll show him trying to recreate the trajectory of a bullet by feeding a dowel through a smashed up fake skull. What kind of science is this? Is this a joke? A five year old should be able to figure out that there is no way to tell precisely at what angle JFK's head was during the precise moment the bullet impacted it, and there is no way that you could trace exactly where the round (or what was left of it) exited when half of the man's head was missing! Under that criteria he could draw a line tracing the path of the bullet to Jackie Kennedy (who besides, had motive to murder Jack for all of his infidelity)! The size of the entrance wound being used as evidence that the 6.5mm round from Oswald's gun couldn't have entered the President's head is another fallacy. First off, the documentary makes the case that the whole autopsy was slapdash and botched, so how can any evidence from it suddenly be useful? Secondly, the entrance wound recorded was not measured from Kennedy's bare skull, it was measured as being the hole in his scalp, and assuming it was "too small" as the documentary claims, what the documentary completely misses is the elasticity of skin. Skin stretches and contracts, there's no reason the entrance wound in the skin had to be exactly the same size, or larger than the bullet.Lastly, eye witness testimony is used to corroborate claims of a cover-up, it's taken at absolute face value, yet every eye witness that corroborated the report of three shots coming from the book depository is outright ignored? On top of this, all of these stories about skullduggery in the operating theatre, shifty Secret Service agents - and yet - not one eye witness came forward claiming they saw the secret service car fire a shot into the president? Come on...Presenting this nonsense as a documentary, or anything resembling a factual investigation is an insult to anyone capable of critical thought.
dbrayshaw
Of all the theories that have come and gone through the years, this film is the most believable. In fact, I think it is as accurate an account as one will find. Surely, if Oswald's first shot had not gained the notice of George Hickey and set him to retrieve the AR15 on the back floor inside the car where he sat behind JFK's limo; had he not taken the safety off, and was not forced backwards by the movement of the vehicle, Oswald would have surely sent another bullet into JFK that may or may not have killed him; but, unfortunately, it was Hickey's truly hapless accident that blew out the skull of the President with an explosive round of ammo, not the sort of bullet that penetrates through the target as Oswald used.Plus, with all the loss of evidence by the huge number of Secret Servicemen around the autopsy process, with numerous of them making demands for photographic film, the President's brain, and even insisting that a piece of metal be attached to an xray, the weight of evidence against the SS in conspiring to cover-up their involvement is abundantly staggering. Why would the SS not want the real truth to be known? First of all, they had a suspect, Oswald, that could be held as the culprit in all three shots; and secondly, they feared for their jobs. A huge investigation regarding the competency of that service would have taken decades to complete. After all, there weren't any computers in those days to help sort out all that information, as the Warren Commission discovered when they tried to assimilate what they could of all the testimonies into their half-baked conclusion. Stacks of information were never touched, especially that which indicated by bystanders the smell of gunpowder at street level.Finally, I know the truth. I recall the day it happened, and the week following. The entire nation was in mourning. My grandmother, who was staying at our house while Mom was in the hospital, had all four of us kids sit quietly in front of the TV as if we were in a funeral parlor, while she sobbed. It was like losing a member of the family to us. I did grow to greatly respect JFK over the next couple decades after I read his book, watched PT109, and learned about the Cuban missile crisis. He was a good man who suffered terribly with Addison's disease and did the best he could for our country. What a solemn spot his grave site is, in dedication to an American, who, despite his challenges, faced them well.
