John Mackenzie's account of events leading up to the Jack Kennedy assassination from the obstructed point of view of Jack Ruby has many narrative virtues not shared by Oliver Stone's JFK: focus, cohesion, cogency, compactness, an enveloping ambience, not to mention the absence of an external publicity machine to drum out the message that what matters about a movie is not what it intrinsically is, but (Stone's favorite alibi) where it stands, leans, or lines up. Any connection of this one to historical reality -- to a real man named Jack Ruby who shot a real man named Lee Harvey Oswald -- is very much beside the point. The photography (Phil Meheux) is atmospherically dark while providing adequate illumination; the tawdriness of a Dallas strip club in a more decorous era is vividly recalled; and Danny Aiello, with his head pinched at the top (the point sharpened by plastered-down hair) and overflowing a tight collar at the base, ably carries the flag of film noir as a small-timer caught up in a high-stakes game. Of course the movie is not exactly first in the field with its conspiracy theory, but then neither was JFK. With Sherilyn Fenn and Arliss Howard. (1992) — Duncan Shepherd
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