Rush to Judgment

A documentary on the Kennedy assassination and the Warren Report. Mark Lane proffers the legal brief for the defence of Lee Harvey Oswald he could not give in court and was barred from presenting to the Warren Commission, and develops a compelling point-by-point refutation of the governmental and judicial conclusions on JFK's assassination. Meanwhile, de Antonio is simultaneously presenting a damning indictment of the media's role in shaping the public image of the events of November 1963. His insistence on underlining every cut or dissolve, and buffeting together network and amateur footage, belies the seamlessness of the 'authorised version', the hastily-erected TV consensus which soon had eyewitnesses disbelieving their own evidence, and which rapidly assumed the status of 'reality'. Lane may come to a worthy and credible conclusion, but de Antonio restores the dimension of healthy inconclusiveness; Lane fights selective facts, but more importantly in the long run, de Antonio exposes a selected myth.