Executive Action [1973]

 1970s weren’t just a fertile period for arresting and topical political paranoia/conspiracy thrillers, but also those that centred on political assassinations. However, rarely did they delve into an actual one, like Executive Action did with an intriguing mix of political impudence and deadpan storytelling. Co-written by Dalton Trumbo, the renowned American scriptwriter who’d been blacklisted during the McCarthy Witch Hunts, Mark Lane, civil rights activist and leading researcher into conspiracy theories surrounding JFK’s assassination, and Donald Freed, decorated playwright and investigative journalist – and thereby providing an apposite context to the film’s political lens – it concocted a sinister deep state that coldly hatched and clinically executed American President John F. Kennedy’s murder a decade back. The conspiracy is masterminded and funded by Robert Foster (Rober Ryan, in his final screen performance), an archetypal robber baron who pulls strings from the shadows, while the plot is orchestrated by veteran black ops specialist James Farrington (Burt Lancaster). The film starts with a cabal of men who’ve assembled in Foster’s plush ranch to align on the need to liquidate Kennedy, discuss the actions that they’ve put in motion, and to get the seemingly all-important go-ahead from powerful oil magnate Harold Ferguson (Will Greer), who eventually accedes when all three “catastrophic” predictions by Farrington about Kennedy are proven right – viz. his support for the ongoing civil rights movement, adoption of NTBT, and withdrawal of American troops from Vietnam. Interspersing cynical conversations and spare dramatic recreations with gritty documentary footage, we thereafter see the preparations and operationalization of their murky ploy – including setting up of Lee Harvey Oswald as the fall guy – which managed to be captivating despite being aware of how it’ll all end.

Director: David Miller

Genre: Thriller/Political Thriller/Conspiracy Thriller

Language: English

Country: US