Richard Condon's novel takes all the conflicting theories about who murdered John Kennedy - the Cubans, the Mob, a lone assassin - and ties them together with a satirical vision of the real motives for that epochal killing. The book is a black vision of American society's values and energies in the '60s and a stimulating read for anyone who remembers the craziness of those years. The film, released in 1979, is necessarily compressed, and so the various threads pursued by Jeff Bridges, playing the half-brother of the dead President Keegan, are less clear and allusive as echoes of what might have happened to Kennedy, and so less interesting. If this story were made as a multi-hour miniseries, with all the (as it turns out, misleading) visions of what really happened given the detail that Condon created for the novel, then both the book and its cinematic adaptation would be better-known. In spite of skilled and nuanced performances by all the cast members, especially Bridges and John Huston, the real horror of the assassination and its aftermath aren't given sufficient satirical power in the film. Still, it's worth watching. Then, you must read the novel.
Review of Winter Kills
