Executive Action is a 1973 movie about the assassination of U.S. President John F. Kennedy, written by Dalton Trumbo, Donald Freed and Mark Lane.
It is one of two American films to present a dramatization portraying the JFK assassination as a conspiracy (the other being Oliver Stone's 1991 movie JFK). Despite many similarities of the plotline to JFK, Executive Action presents a far more direct and unemotional account of the Kennedy Assasiniation than Stone's film. The film is done in an almost documentary style and was clearly filmed on a small budget, despite the presence of two big Hollywood names, Robert Ryan and Burt Lancaster. Another big difference to JFK is that the story is told entirely from the perspective of the conspirators.
ris: Yeah, I got his rifle. It's a 6.5 millimeter Italian Carcano. It shoots high and to the left, and the bolt sticks. Christ, the Italians quit makin' these 25 years ago! They called it "The rifle that never hurt anyone... on purpose!"
ster: Ah well, it's only over. And there'll be nothing can we call our own but death. That small model of the barren earth which serves as paste and cover to our bones. For God's sake, let us sit upon the ground and tell sad stories of the death of kings.
Commentator: In the three years after the murders of John F. Kennedy and Lee Harvey Oswald eighteen material witnesses died, 6 by gunfire, 3 by motor accidents, 2 by suicide, 1 by a cut throat, 1 by a karate chop to the neck, 3 by heart attacks, 2 from natural causes. An actuary engaged by the London Sunday Times concluded: On November 22, 1963, the odds of these witnesses being dead by Feb. 1967 are one hundered thousand trillion to one.
wald Imposter: If I was a doctor, and I wanted to give the world an enema, I'd stick the nozzle right here in Dallas, Texas.
ster: [speaking to Farrington] Dallas has one of the highest murder rates in the country. In the last two years, the Secret Service has established 149 threats against Kennedy's life from Texas alone, yet they send him into hostile territory with no more protection than you and I would arrange for a favorite dog.
