Echoes of Dallas: Six Decades of JFK on the Silver Screen — The Eighties

Hollywood's biggest productions reduce Oswald to a two-dimensional loony

In Stanley Kubrick’s “Full Metal Jacket,” Vincent D’Onofrio plays “Private Pyle,” so nicknamed by his contemptuous drill sergeant for his incompetence. Pyle becomes increasingly alienated from his immediate environment, eventually turning to violence, as the Warren Report says Oswald did. (Credit: Warner Bros./Internet Movie Database)

This is the third in a six-part series exploring how Hollywood moviemakers have portrayed and distilled the JFK assassination. Part 1, the Sixties: Here. Part 2, the Seventies: Here.

In the decade that witnessed the end of the Cold War, no major motion pictures dwelt on the JFK assassination as a theme. But a few did briefly mention Lee Harvey Oswald in the context of a crazed, alienated ex-military loner, as if smothering any doubt about his guilt. Only two — an early loss-making movie by HBO Pictures and a very minor production directed by Robert Altman — even hinted at anything beyond the Warren Report’s verdict.