Rush to Judgment

I viewed Rush to Judgment when it came out in 1967. It was four years since the assassination and there wasn't a lot of information about the Dallas tragedy, except for what the government wanted its citizens to know. It would take decades to get to the level of knowledge we now have in the year 2006. In 1967, we didn't know that commission member Gerald Ford altered the location of JFK's back wound to a neck wound, thus facilitating the ridiculous single bullet theory.

So when Mark Lane presented his movie, "Rush To Judgment," the information he provided in it was of tremendous importance to the JFK research community. We will always be indebted to the work and courage that Mark Lane showed in providing this most important and informative movie.

Over the decades, there's been so much propaganda on both sides of the JFK assassination argument, that it could be off-putting to anybody, especially the novice.

But the strength of RUSH TO JUDGMENT is it's timing, the period, coming just a couple of years after the assassination... True, as it was so early, not as much was known then--- but sometimes less is more; what you have here are just fresh, unpolished, unrehearsed, raw and chilling interviews with the witnesses at a time LONG before the whole topic had become the lost-in-time cliché it seems to now be.

The quiet simplicity, lack of pretense, the (then) newness of the subject-matter, and the flavor of the era drive home this documentary's point more effectively and convincingly--- and hit a far more macabre note --- than any thunderous, drum-beating entry today could possibly achieve.

Mark Lane's Rush to Judgement was pretty much the watershed moment in Kennedy Conspiracy land. Up to that point, very few people had put the pieces together and then presented them in an easily digestible manner.

The sad truth is that trying to diagram all the inconsistencies, contradictions, oversights (intentional and non) and outright lies in the Warren Commission Report could drive anyone either crazy or to sleep very quickly. And let's be honest, if you are a die-hard believer in the WC, I doubt this film will change your mind. But if you haven't committed one way or the other, and simply want a very concise, compelling, and scary-as-hell overview of why those "conspiracy nuts" are the way they are, you owe it to yourself to check it out --- if you care.

The biggest minuses of Rush to Judgement are both it's budget (zero) and the neophyte directorial and production skills. There are times when you can swear you re watching a film strip in your 1977 Social Studies class...it really is *that* static.

But what Lane's film lacks in style it more than makes up for in substance as well as incredibly convincing argumentation. Remember, Lane is a lawyer first and foremost: making convincing arguments is what he's good at. Digging up tons of eyewitnesses to the assassination is another.

If you take away nothing from Rush to Judgement, I think you'll notice one very important detail that runs through nearly all interviewees in this documentary: they are SCARED ***tless! And they should be --- the majority featured here met strange, untimely, or unexplained fates very shortly after this film was released. You can practically see the fatal visions flashing in their pupils as they reluctantly at first, then sometimes eagerly spill their guts about what they REALLY BELIEVE HAPPENED. These are not people seeking attention or looking to get rich quick...you don't even have to get past the film's black and white credits to see that. But these people's stories are all remarkably similar. Mmmmmm.

Why, you may ask are these people taking such a risk? Are they stupid? No. They simply CARE. They cared about their country and they saw that something was really, really wrong...and they wanted to do something about it. And some of them paid for that concern with their lives. Pretty awesome if you ask me. If *you* care, you owe it to yourself to see Lane's film as well. It's a very rare case where content trumps style hands down to create a classic.

When one considers that the assassination of President Kennedy is one, if not the most important events of our countries history, then one must conclude that Rush To Judgement is definitely one of the most important Films. Mark Lane a New York Lawyer and former State Campaign Manager for President Kennedy takes his camera to Dallas shortly after The Warren Commission issued it's report on the assassination of President Kennedy. What he uncovers is what the Main Stream Media failed to report to the American people about the assassination. It was too hot for the Media, but not for Lane. Rush to Judgement is a true documentary filled with live interviews of the witnesses and the people closest to the truth about killing of our 35th President. This Black and White film will take you back to a time and place and let you hear what the witnesses said in rare interviews. Lee Bowers who worked the Rail Road Tower behind the infamous Grassy Knoll tells Mark Lane what he saw as the shots rang out. After the filmed interview with Lane and before the release of the film Mr. Bowers is found dead-Was it just an accident? Just a coincidence? No other work of film is as important to the history of the assassination as Rush to Judgement. The book sold over a million copies and the film is better than the book. If you have any interest in the subject make sure you see Rush to Judgement. It has the one Special Effect too few films has...The Truth.

I watched this on Prime last night as there didn't seem to be anything of interest on the main channels. Here we have an in-depth look at the evidence as it stood not too long after the shooting, and with the advantage of it being written long before some of the more crazy theories were put forward. The simple question 'which way did you look when you heard the first shot' got the almost unanimous answer 'toward the grassy knoll' and that's the attention-grabber. As the film progresses, it becomes ever clearer that there was some serious monkey business going on with the evidence and reports. A superb work.