Oliver Stone: Who Killed J.F.K.?

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% The crucial historical footage was the Zapruder film, for a copy of which Stone paid $40,000. "It's the most important visual record we have of the assassination," says Sklar. "To make a movie without it is to miss a lot." Over and over, at the climax of JFK, Garrison plays the fatal shot -- tragedy as therapy -- to help solve the mystery and restore the fearful impact of the day that yanked a nation out of its cocoon of innocence. For all its cynicism, or even paranoia, about official venality, the film is a call for a kind of informed innocence. Stone says: Open your eyes wide, like a child's. Look around. See what fits. And Costner's summation is right out of an old Frank Capra movie in its declaration of principle in the face of murderous odds. Lost causes, as Capra's Mr. Smith said, are the only causes worth fighting for.

To Stone's old enemies, JFK may be another volatile brew of megalomania and macho sentiment. To his new critics, the film may seem deliriously irresponsible, madly muttering like a street raver. But to readers of myriad espionage novels and political-science fictions, in which the CIA or some other gentlemen's cabal is always the villain, the movie's thesis will be a familiar web spinning of high-level malevolence. JFK is Ludlum or Le Carre, but for real.

Or -- crucial distinction -- for reel. Memorize this mantra, conspiracy buffs and guardians of public respectability: JFK is only a movie. And, on its own pugnacious terms -- the only terms Oliver Stone would ever accept -- a terrific one.