Every Oliver Stone Movie Ranked Worst To Best

Just missing out on the top spot, JFK is the first and best of the Oliver Stone political biopics. Like the title implies, it's all about John F. Kennedy, his tenure as US president and the abrupt conclusion it came to through assassination. Yet it accomplishes this with no actor playing the titular person.

Instead, JFK focuses on James "Jim" Garrison, the man who investigated the president's death. As Lee Harvey Oswald's crime is slowly reconstructed, the film analyses the conspiracies, actors and motives that led to the murder. Stone himself believes that Kennedy was killed for standing against the build-up of the military industrial complex.

Putting the production together certainly wasn't easy for Stone. Initially, he was affected greatly by Kennedy's death, saying: "The Kennedy murder was one of the signal events of the postwar generation, my generation". He was able to meet with Jim Garrison himself and while the former investigator left angrily based on the Oliver's questions, the project still came together.

What makes JFK far better than both W. and Nixon is its use of intrigue to create a well crafted portrait of political tension. The deep controversy around both Kennedy's death and the film's production further fuelled its eventual success. It remains deeply fascinating to this day.