Back and to the left.

Twelve magestic lies#

This is a weird movie for me to review, for a number of reasons (listed below). But primarily because I was guided to this film by way of Delta Green, the tabletop RPG.

Delta Green may be one of my favorite tabletop rpgs - it combines Lovecraftian-branded horror, Noir-esque detective work, and gritty “anyone can die at any moment” realism. You (the players) play as members of Delta Green, the most superest toppest secret organization within the government tasked with keeping the reality of Lovecraftian horrors from reaching the public, generally by any means neccesarily. You’re the X-Files containment/clean-up crew. You destroy the evidence, be that paperwork or people. It’s not so much a power fantasy as it is a survival horror rollercaster.

(I say “you as in the players” because, being the forever-GM in most situations, I have not had a chance to play Delta Green from a player’s standpoint. But one must imagine Sisyphys happy.)

But back on topic: In the vein of AD&D, the 2016 Delta Green handbook contained its own “Appendix N” containing movies, books, etc to help get one in the mindset of (or show examples of “The Conspiracy” surrounding) the Delta Green game world. While I still have a long list to go, the 1991 Oliver Stone film JFK was on that list, which is how I got to watching it.

Let’s go back in time to junior high#

8th grade science class, November. I don’t think the unit we were studying had anything to do with this, but come November my science teacher pumped the brakes (much like William Greer) and did an abrupt topic change. We spent the whole of (or at least the majority of) November learning about the Kennedy assassination and some associated light criminalistics topics. As my teacher put it: “If there is a heaven, I hope it has a fast forward/rewind remote control and I can just float wherever I want, so I can watch this [the assassination] from every angle and see it for myself.”

And then he showed us the Zapruder film multiple times.

Kind of an odd guy. From what I recall he left teaching shortly after that. That was my first real introduction to the JFK assassination (and while not overtly discussed, the conspiracy around it).

Fast forward to high school#

In high school, I took a criminalistics proper class. It was only offered once a year. I happened to take it when JFK Reloaded was released. So of course, what is any good criminalistics teacher to do? That’s right, walk his whole class down to the computer lab and offer up $20 to the first student who could download and get JFK Reloaded running on a school computer.

Try as we might, and regardless of my skill with technology, we were not able to get the game to run on a school computer. So the next day (or a couple days following) the teacher brought in his personal laptop on which he had downloaded and installed JFK Reloaded and had us all give it a try. I don’t remember if he was explicity conspiratorial regarding this subject, but we certainly discussed aspects such as the Magic Bullet in class.

In general#

I saw the Seinfeld reference to this film decades before seeing the movie, and dozens of times. I didn’t even realize it was a direct reference to the film until I was doing some reading on the movie post-viewing. “Magic loogie” has a lot more social cache in my household. I don’t even think my parents have seen this movie.

On with the show#

Anyway, the movie.

Guitar

It was … fine? I guess maybe a little better than fine, but not much.

Spoilers above, spoilers below#

(Free range spoilers ahead, you’ve been warned.)

Also for clarification, I evidently watched the Director’s Cut.

I generally don’t really care for Kevin Costner as an actor, but he didn’t annoy me in this role. Michael Rooker was surprisingly good, and Gary Oldman was goddamn amazing (as he usually is). But this movie had everyone in it. It’s just a who’s who of early 90s stars. I’m staunchly against stunt-casting, but for the most part none of these choices really bothered me. John Candy did initially, but his character is so out-there it kinda gets away with it.

While I might have a soft spot for legal dramas, I feel like this did a pretty good job keeping some of the “wall of exposition” scenes interesting, with other intercut scenes that are a touch in the “Ken Burns” school of art.

I did have the thought that early on we’re teased with parts of the Zapruder film, but it’s “dramatically” cut right before the actual shot occurs, making me think Oliver Stone was blue-balling the audience due to fears of showing a presidential death in a commercial film. But turns out, if you wait out the three and a half fuckin hours of this film, you get to see that shot repeated like 5 times in a row, to an almost sickening degree.

I don’t really know much about Oliver Stone, other than by looking at the rest of his filmography it appears he has a weird hard-on for very pro-American topics. This does not motivate me to seek out any more of his work. (I understand he wrote the 1982 Conan, but I don’t count that since it appears to be purely a contract deal.)

I can’t speak to any of the historical/biopic elements of the film. It was entertaining enough, though I probably won’t rewatch it. It also contains two of the most insane movie wigs I can recall (Tommy Lee Jones and Joe Pesci).

Post-upload edit to add that everyone is so goddamn sweaty.

Once again with feeling#

Which gets us back to how we got here. As a general issue, public-consumption ready piece of media intended to onboard a new Delta Green player into the layers of conspiracy and lies and misdirects that embody the tabletop game, it’s a great example. The mixture of noir “pulling at a simple string that turns into much more” combined with “the government is lying and will kill anyone it needs to” is wrapped up in a fairly easy-to-digest package.

The Grassy Knoll might not be everyone’s personal cup of tea to believe in, but it’s very understandable starting point that people are going to be aware of in order to start thinking in these terms. Having someone watch this movie and then after the fact saying “Okay now replace JFK with Cthulhu fish people, and the CIA with Delta Green” is probably going to do more legwork for you than if you start out “Okay in 1928 there’s a failed raid in Innsmouth…”

As a Delta Green movie it gets 7 out of 9. As a movie movie I give it 5 out of 9.

If you want to get ahold of me, you can now reach me at floppyparts@proton.me. Send me whatever you want.

floppies