His problem in "JFK" was formidable: to put forward not merely an alternative to the Warren Commission's finding that one lonely, deranged assassin killed President Kennedy, but a theory diametrically opposed - that the killing was orchestrated by a wide-ranging conspiracy that included the CIA, the FBI, the Pentagon, the Mafia, the White House, the vice president and J. Edgar Hoover.
He succeeds brilliantly. The films lags in spots - with all that exposition, it's got to - but for the most part it rolls from beginning to end with chilling persuasiveness.
I, of all people, should have been an easy mark for "JFK." I'm a sucker for conspiracy theories. Moreover, I've always been a Warren Commission skeptic.
The Commission asked us to believe that a misanthropic schlemiel, armed with a $20 rifle he'd bought from a mail-order house, had plotted and - in a flash of Zen marksmanship - executed the murder of a president of the United States, then, while in custody, was himself murdered by a small-time Mafia hood overcome with patriotic feelings of vengeance.
"The Flying Nun" was more believable.
But a conspiracy theory that involved everybody to the right of Walt Disney? Pul-leeze. My own feeling was that Kennedy's murder was the result of a small-time conspiracy involving rogue elements of the CIA and the Mafia, both of whom Kennedy was attempting to dismantle.
Then I made the mistake of going back to review the evidence, much of it as laid out two decades ago by Des Moines attorney David Belin in his book: ''November 22, 1963: You Are the Jury." Belin was one of the Warren
Commission's chief investigators and he takes us through the testimony, answering the various challenges in turn. He snows you with facts.
