If there's ever been an event more picked apart and analyzed in our history than the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, I don't know what it is. Whether you believe that the President was assassinated by a lone gunman or any one of the numerous conspiracy theories out there, JFK: The Case For Conspiracy will intrigue you.

Rather than getting into all of the muck over whether the mafia, the Soviets, the Cubans, the military-industrial complex, or whoever else has been named at being possible perpetrators of the assassination, JFK: The Case For Conspiracy focuses solely on the event itself by looking at the evidence.

JFK: The Case For Conspiracy begins with footage from the day of the assassination showing John and Jackie Kennedy at the airport in Dallas, then in the limousines well before the shooting occurred. Rather than just the infamous Zapruder film so many are used to seeing, all of this helps to give a better feeling of what it was like in Dallas that day. The beginning half is compiled of radio broadcasts from the day of the assassination as well as films taken by citizens that day of the motorcade, the shooting, and the aftermath. I thought at first the introduction was a clip they used from elsewhere. The narration of the events and reasons that brought JFK to Dallas are detailed. However, the narration is barely audible. When it changes to a radio broadcast that was happening that day, the sound is much better.


Robert J. Groden was the technical advisor to Oliver Stone for his film JFK. He has a background forensic photography although no formal training. One could argue that the forces behind the conspiracy want to silence his analysis of the evidence, except that some of the questions which have been raised about his background have come at his own hand. Such as his testimony at the OJ Simpson civil trial in which he asserted a photograph was a fake that later on was pretty much proven not to be.

However, in JFK: The Case For Conspiracy, Groden does an excellent job dissecting the evidence, and not just the photographs. In fact, he does very little trying to show that evidence what forged. What he does do is make the case that certain pieces of evidence must have been forges where other evidence and eyewitness testimony contradicts it.

The detailed analysis of the movements shown by the occupants of the limousine in the film is very good and makes a case for there being at least a second shooter on the grassy knoll. Couple that with film showing witnesses - including a police officer - running up the knoll after someone immediately following the shooting, and it would seem that there is a good indication that there were shots fired from somewhere other than the Book Depository.

In detailing the President's wounds, much is made of the wound in the President's neck. It's something the Warren Commission totally ignored. The wound was only a small entrance wound described by doctors. Yet at the time of the autopsy, it was a huge gaping wound. What happened to the wound in between the time the doctors saw the President and the medical examiner? Groden not only shows evidence which contradicts itself but blows apart the so-called "magic-bullet theory" better than anyone else I've ever seen before.

The Zapruder film very clearly shows that the President was hit from the front. That much is quite clear, even before Groden, the narrator, tells why the physical evidence also supports this and goes against the conclusions issued in the Warren Commission report. It also clearly shows why Jackie Kennedy crawled out on the trunk of the limousine, but that's something I'll let viewers interested in the subject learn on their own.

The footage of the shooting is pretty graphic. I could see the hit on the President's head and a splatter of red even from a fair distance on a fuzzy print. There are graphic pictures of President Kennedy's body from his autopsy as well. I found them to be terribly haunting, and I'm not someone who is all that jumpy about things like this. Those who are squeamish or easily disturbed might be bothered by the graphic nature of some of the evidence.

The witnesses who testify are a pretty impressive list that is hard to dismiss, including the doctors who attended President Kennedy after he was shot. Their testimony and description of the President's wounds is uniformly in agreement with each other and contradicts the supposed autopsy photos and x-rays. The thing is, the photos and x-rays also contradict each other! So whoever was involved in covering it up, didn't get the x-rays and autopsy photos to match. This is why Groden's credentials don't really come into play as JFK: The Case For Conspiracy really does a terrific job just showing that the evidence presented in the Warren Commissions report just doesn't add up when looked at against each other.

The way the photos are dissected of the book depository and of the grassy knoll aren't as convincing as the rest of the evidence. Thos photos are very grainy, and what is supposedly evidence of someone in a window or standing behind a wall isn't all that convincing to me. It looks like a lot of shadows and possibly tricks of the light. Although the analysis was interesting, I've seen more convincing examples of photographic evidence in an episode of Ghost Hunters.

At the end of JFK: The Case For Conspiracy, I still didn't feel I knew why President John F. Kennedy was assassinated, but I was more certain than ever that there was not a lone gunman. There's an incredible amount of detail and analysis of the evidence. It can feel somewhat repetitive as the analysis drones on and on, but I found it to be fascinating rather than tedious. If you're looking for answers as to who was behind the assassination, you won't find that here. I think that anyone who watches this, though, will be convinced at the end that Lee Harvey Oswald did not act alone.


BONUS FEATURES:

• Zapruder Film
• Zapruder Film Slow-Motion



© 2008 Patti Aliventi

Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD