Interview with the Assassin (2002)

It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

Great movie! If you want to be entertained and have a few good laughs, see this movie. The music is also very good,

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

I learned an important lesson from Interview with the Assassins. If your elderly neighbor claims to have shot John F. Kennedy... run. Rob Kobeleski, the main character of this film, unfortunately didn't know that. Interview with the Assassin is about a reporter, Rob, whose neighbor, Walter, claims to have been the second gunman on the grassy knoll on that fateful day in Dallas back in 1963. Intrigued, Rob tries to learn more, but gets himself in over his head as a massive conspiracy unfolds around he and Walt, putting both of their lives in more danger than he could have imagined.The intriguing catch to this film is that it is all shot from Rob's perspective. Rob operates the camera and we follow the story along from his eyes and his vantage point. It adds a very unique allure to a film with an oddly compelling story. It makes the film a very interesting watch and it engages us in the story in a very different way. Of course, without this gimmick Interview with the Assassin likely wouldn't amount to anything, but that is usually the case with these kinds of films; see Cloverfield or The Blair Witch Project.Personally, I'm a sucker for these types of films. I haven't seen one in this style that I didn't like, and the same goes for Interview with the Assassin. It's a great little film that excellently blends suspense, action, and gripping drama. The story is one of those that makes you turn your head in confusion at multiple points, sometimes out of absurdity but mostly out of genuine interest in the bizarre story that unfolds in this film. There are definitely some odd and possibly unnecessary elements in the film, and the script falters at points, but overall this is a unique experience. Granted it doesn't amount to a whole lot and you can sort of see the climax coming, but for a relatively short film it's totally worth the watch.

It felt real to me I found myself believing every word Walter said. Even if the guy was nuts his skill and knowledge pointed to the fact that he could have killed JFK. He knew the scene of the crime very well ( And I don't mean from a spectators POV) To much evidence proves that he was the second shooter. The way it was shot helped the overall look of the film. I actually felt like I was watching a documentary until the cast credit came up at the end. Then I realized that this was a filmmakers recount on the actual confession. Many other forms of media have been created about the JFK murder but this one really stole the show for me. I also enjoyed the fact that a former American hero of the marines would actually be the guy to secure supreme power by killing the president. I got to say the scene towards the end where Walter is proving he done it by getting a gun into the white house and about to shoot another president was totally crazy in all the right ways.

This film had a really good premise - the presentation of a fictitious (to some of the viewers out there : yes, FICTITIOUS!) story within a factual-like packaging. This is something that Michael Crichton has done in his books in the past in titles such as "Eaters of the Dead" and "The Great Train Robbery". When done well, as Mr Crichton did, this technique can make an otherwise ordinary or even boring story great. I thought that this was what "Interview with the Assassin" was going to do.The film started out well and the performances were good - Raymond J. Barry was particularly well-suited to his role. Later, though, it began meandering and in the end, became little more than just another Hollywood mass-produced flick. I wished that the director would have been a little bit more consistent in his vision. What did he want the movie to be? A documentary (albeit a fictitious one) or just a standard thriller? In the end, unfortunately, he took the latter route.Documentaries which examine things in real life usually do not have a beginning, middle, and end - life is just not this tidy. This movie, however, does have a beginning, middle, and then a neat little resolution of things in the end. Movie goers can then dust the pop-corn off of their chests and return once more into the grind.In short, "Interview with the Assassin" was a movie which could have been something new and exciting but instead ended up being something old and mediocre. As a documentary, it is not very believable (at least to me it wasn't.....), and, as a thriller, it is not very good.

****SPOILERS**** Fascinating as well as thought-provoking documentary-style movie about a 62 year-old former US Marine sniper claiming to be the unknown gunman on the grassy knoll that shot and killed President John F. Kennedy on the fateful afternoon of November 22, 1963 in Dallas Texas.Asking his San Bernardino Calif. neighbor laid-off KXPX TV cameraman Ron Kobeleski, Dylan Haggerty, to film him Walter Ohlinger, Raymond J. Barry, wants to get something off his chest as well as his mind that has been bothering him for almost 40 years. Told by his doctor that he has cancer and no more then six months to live Walter feels that he can't and shouldn't take this secret with him to the grave but has to let the world know about it. He chooses Ron to video-tape his long kept secret and have it broadcast on national TV after his death. Walter tells Ron that he's the second sniper who shot JFK on November 22, 1963 and the one who really killed him not Lee Harvey Oswald as everyone has been told by the government and media. Taking Ron to a bank safe deposit-box that he has Walter shows him a spent 6.5 shell casing that he claims to be from the bullet that killed JFK. Ron going to a ballistic lab to have the casing examined is told later by the lab technician that the casing was manufactured in 1962. It's also determined that the indention on it where it's been fired was made between one to three years later between 1962 to 1965. Which made it possible to be the bullet that killed JFK on November 22, 1963. Later Ron and Walter go to see a long time friend and former Marine Jimmy Jones, Jered McVay. Walter is surprised to find out that his former CO in the Marine Corp. John Seymour, Derrell Sandeen, is still alive and living in Virginia. Seymour was the one behind the plot to kill JFK by getting Walter to do the shooting. It's when Walter and Ron found out about Seymour being alive that strange things started happening to both of them. The two are followed on the highways and roads by cars as well as on the streets by strange and unknown persons getting threatening phone calls day and night telling them to get of the case. Walter starts to get more and more paranoid and disturbed over whats happening to him as well as Ron. Looking out the window of their motel room one night Walter sees someone in the parking lot spying on him and runs out to see who it is only to have him drive away. Later going to a private investigator Garry Deetz, Nicolas Mitz, with the car license plate number Walter finds out that it belongs to a local policeman Alan Deivecchio, Jim Hisen. Going to Deivecchio's home Walter brutally beats him up where Ron tells Walter to stop being so irrational and wanton. It will wrack everything that their doing to get to the bottom of the JFK killing by him proving that he was the killer.Getting to John Seymour's home in Virginia they find his son John Seymour Jr. Jack Tate who tell Walter and Ron that his father is very sick and in the Bethesda naval Hospital. Seeing Seymour at the hospital he tells Ron that Walter is sick and crazy and was institutionalized for mental illness and is also very dangerous. Feeling that he's about to call for help as Seymour tries to press the button for help Walter takes it away from him. Walter then tells Ron to leave him alone with Seymour so he can have a little heart to heart talk with his fellow Marine buddy. Later Walter leaving Seymour tells the startled and shocked Ron that Seymour had just died of natural causes. Ron by now starts to realize that Walter is unstable and dangerous and gets in touch with his ex-wife Kate Williamson. Kate tells Ron that she has proof that Walter was in a mental hospital suffering from a breakdown as well as mental illness in 1963 at the time when JFK was killed in Dallas. Ron confronting Walter with this evidence is told by Walter that his ex-wife is nuts but admits that yes it's true that there is documentation of him being committed in late 1963. But that was only a cover story so he could have an alibi for the Dallas police and FBI about the JFK killing that Seymour provided for him and then have Lee Harvey Oswald framed for the JFK assassination.By now Ron starts to realizes, or so he thinks, that Walter is an obvious dangerous crack-pot and tells him that he's had enough of his off-the-wall stories about him being the man who killed JFK. Walter is also told by Ron that if he keeps going along with him both he and Walter will either be killed or jailed or put away in a mental ward for life. Walter outraged that Ron still doesn't believe him tells him that he didn't want to do this but now he will. Telling Ron that if he wants proof positive that he killed the president of the USA that he should meet him in Washington D.C the next day and he'll get all the proof that he needs! It will convince not only him but the world that he, Walter Ohlinger, killed the president. Feeling now that there is something to what Walter's been telling him Ron goes to D.C to meet and see just what proof he has to show him and shockingly finds out that Walter was not the phony and crack-pot that he thought that he was. But far truer in what he was telling him then he ever dreamed of in his most wildest and bloodcurdling nightmares.