Stone’s emphatic, zeitgeist-shaking counter-history of the JFK assassination memorializes the valiant efforts of New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison—played by Kevin Costner, boasting a thick southern drawl—to uncover an elaborate coup d'état within the military-industrial complex, a mission that takes him into both the depths of the CIA and a radical underworld. In blending actual archival footage with treated simulacra of archival footage as well as conspicuously artificial recreations of late-sixties America, Stone offers one of the boldest representational mash-ups of his career, an intoxicating, jarringly edited motorcade of images and sounds that knowingly clouds the border between living record and imitation. Though JFK has been rightfully scrutinized since its release over the relative accuracy of its historical account, key to its persuasively expressed thesis is the idea that in a functioning democracy, healthy suspicion toward government infrastructure and the narratives espoused by powerful interests are vital even if the struggles do not finally amount to legislative action. In the spirit of its titular fallen president, the film asks not what its proposed conspiracy theory can do for you, but what you can do with its call for an active and inquisitive citizenry.