Executive Action (1973) – Nostalgia Central

This dramatisation – the first film to openly question the veracity of the Warren Commission’s report into the death of John F Kennedy – explained how high-level covert conspirators might have planned and plotted the 1963 JFK assassination based on the data and facts of the case.

The film posits that a covert group of rogue intelligence agents, ultra-conservative politicians, unscrupulously greedy business interests, and freelance assassins become increasingly alarmed at President Kennedy’s policies, including his views on race relations and civil rights, winding down the Vietnam War, and ending the oil depletion allowance.

They decide to terminate him through an “executive action” utilising three teams of well-trained snipers during JFK’s visit to Dallas and place the blame on the supposed CIA operative Lee Harvey Oswald as the lone assassin.

The pivotal figure is James Farrington (Burt Lancaster), a seasoned veteran of international intelligence who uses his expertise in ‘Black Ops’ to coordinate the assimilation of information, the training of the assassins, and the framing of Oswald through the use of a double who is Oswald’s mirror image and the theft of his rifle.

His co-conspirators, Foster (Robert Ryan) and Ferguson (Will Greer), are wealthy, right-wing businessmen who put up the money for Farringdon’s plan.

The picture is cut like an action film (which indeed it is), interweaving real newsreel footage, ersatz newsreel footage, and television images.

But the masterful moment of the film is the recreation of the assassination itself, in which actual film and created images of the event are combined into a dreamlike montage.

Hugely controversial upon its release because of its depiction of the assassination of John F Kennedy, the film was unceremoniously yanked from many cinemas in the US in its first weeks because of the bad press. Many American TV stations also refused to run trailers for the film.

This was Robert Ryan’s final film. He died of cancer four months before the film’s release.

James Farrington
Burt Lancaster
Robert Foster
Robert Ryan
Ferguson
Will Geer
Paulitz
Gilbert Green
Halliday
John Anderson
Gunman (Chris) – Team A
Paul Carr
Tim
Colby Chester
Operations Chief – Team A
Ed Lauter
Smythe
Walter Brooke
Rifleman – Team B
John Brascia
Gunman – Team A
Richard Bull
Depository Clerk
Sidney Clute
Stripper
Deanna Darrin
Gunman – Team A
Lee Delano
McCadden
Lloyd Gough
Oswald Imposter
James MacColl
Art Mendoza
Joaquín Martínez
Rifleman – Team B
Dick Miller
Jack Ruby
Oscar Oncidi
Sergeant
Tom Peters
Officer Brown
Paul Sorensen
Rifleman – Team B
Hunter von Leer
Technician – (Leader of Team B)
William Watson

Director
David Miller