The Trial of Lee Harvey Oswald (1977)

Good story, Not enough for a whole film

best movie i've ever seen.

After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

On November 22, 1963, Lee Harvey Oswald gunned down the President of the United States in the most spectacular assassination in history. He was arrested in double quick time, not for the Kennedy assassination, but for the cold-blooded execution of a police officer who perhaps acting on instinct had challenged him in a routine stop.It took no time at all for the authorities to connect Oswald to the first crime, and in due course he would have been indicted for the assassination, tried, convicted, and sentenced to death. But forty-eight hours after the crime of the century, Oswald himself fell victim to an assassin's bullet. Up to a point, this docu-drama does a reasonable job of tracing that predictable but abandoned future by airbrushing Jack Ruby out of the picture and putting Oswald on trial. There are no faults with the acting, especially that of John Pleshette who bears a more than superficial resemblance to Oswald and who mimics the mannerisms and moods of this narcissistic non-entity to a tee. Unfortunately, towards the end the film loses its way in a maze of manufactured conspiracy. While it is true that these imaginary conspiracies were extant rather than newly invented, a more straightforward approach would have had true historical legitimacy.Nevertheless, some people will have liked it, and the ending is certainly novel, like everything else about the life and death of Lee Harvey Oswald.

I saw this movie as a kid and then watched it from a library copy a week ago.Since my original viewing I have intensely studies the various conspiracy theories, including the Federal Government's conspiracy theory: that a lone nut gunman who happened to be a USMC, Russian speaking defector, with US Naval Intelligence credentials, who flew back from the USSR at the height of the Cold War on a state department ticket, to repatriate in the US without a passport, who enjoyed the company of virulent right-wingers, assassinated the President with a Manlicher-Carcano (known as the Italian "humanitarian" rifle during WW2 because its barrel rifling was so bad) that he bought mail-order from Chicago, when he could have bought something better from just about anywhere in Texas back in 1962.Yeah, these conspiracy theorists are real whack jobs.Watch this movie to stoke the fires of your interest in discovering the truth. And don't let anyone call you a liberal or leftist just because you won't swallow the propaganda.Think for yourself.This movie is a good place to start.

As I stated in my comment regarding JFK(1991), I'm not willing to dismiss any conspiracy theory regarding the Kennedy assassination, unless it's completely devoid of facts, such as in Oliver Stone's propaganda piece. Somebody criticized it for echoing the Warren Commission report, but I don't think this movie supports the Warren Commission's line at all, in fact it offers the possibility of other groups who might've wanted Kennedy dead, including the Ku Klux Klan, who is rarely considered despite the fact that they were so determined to kill in order to resist an integrated south.What we all have to remember that this is pure fiction, since Oswald never lived to go to trial, and Robert Thompson never implied that it was the truth, unlike Oliver Stone who firmly believes his left-wing rhetoric, and expects us to do the same. This TV-Movie and the play it was based on offers all kinds of speculation of who else may or may have not worked with Oswald. Even die-hard believers in the Warren Commission have to accept the fact that Oswald SAID he was a patsy. Was he telling the truth, or was he just trying to throw the spotlight off of himself? Just what would've happened if Jack Ruby never killed him on live television, can only be speculated by all sides. At least Thompson tried to give us something to consider.

With all due respect to the previous viewer, what makes this speculative TV movie so effective is *because* it ends up coming down on the side of the Warren Commission conclusions for the most part, which have been vindicated by all subsequent investigations and serious historical analyses, particularly Gerald Posner in "Case Closed." A priceless moment is when the judge berates Oswald's defense attorney (Lorne Greene) for deliberately injecting a grassy knoll gunman during a shooting demonstration.Skip "JFK", which is all about making things up out of thin air to fit a biased theory. Watch this instead if you can, along with the 1992 Quantum Leap episode "The Oswald Conspiracy".