The year is 1963. The month is November. The city is Dallas. The President of the United States, John F. Kennedy, is coming to visit and two very different men have very different reactions. An eccentric and lonely strip club owner, Jack Ruby (Michael Lerner), worries about an anti-Kennedy ad that has just appeared in the Dallas Morning News. Another loner, a strange man named Lee Harvey Oswald (Frederic Forrest), is busy making plans of his own. When Kennedy is assassinated, history brings Ruby and Oswald together in a way that a shattered nation will never forget.
This is a curious one. It was made for television and, according to Wikipedia, its original running time was 180 minutes. The version that I saw, on VHS, was barely 90 minutes long so obviously, the version I saw was heavily edited. (In the 70s, it was common for made-for-TV movies to be reedited for both syndication and overseas theatrical release.) Maybe that explains why Ruby and Oswald felt do disjointed. In the version I saw, most of the emphasis was put on Jack Ruby running around Dallas and getting on people’s nerves. Very little time was devoted to Oswald and the film was almost entirely stolen by Lerner. Michael Lerner is a familiar character actor. You may not know his name but you will definitely recognize his face. Lerner was convincing and sometimes even sympathetic as the weaselly Ruby. Ruby and Oswald supported the Warren Commission’s findings, that Oswald killed Kennedy and Ruby shot Oswald out of a sense of loyalty to Jackie Kennedy. Michael Lerner’s performance was so good that he almost made that theory plausible.
One final note, for fans of WKRP in Cincinnati: Gordon Jump and Richard Sanders, best known as Arthur Carlson and Les Nessman, were both in Ruby and Oswald, though they did not share any scenes together.
Welcome to the old west, where life is brutal and unpredictable. Ben (Richard Roundtree) joined the Union Army so he could kill white men. When his commanding officer caught Ben in bed with his wife, Ben was forced to commit murder and go on the run. When Ben stumbles across an unnamed Indian (Roy Thinnes) with a bad leg, Ben forces the Indian to accompany him. Despite Ben being loud, cruel, and mentally unstable, an unlikely friendship develops between Ben and the Indian, cemented by their mutual hatred of the white man. When they find a deserted church, Ben and the Indian settle in and start to raise chickens. The Indian’s favorite chicken is a one-eyed bird that he has named Charley. Meanwhile, the Bounty Hunter (Nigel Davenport), a British racist, retraces their every step.
The year is 1944 and a group of Germany officials and military officers, all of whom are secretly opposed to the Nazi regime, are plotting to assassinate Adolf Hitler. A group of American and British operatives, led by Captain Evan Blackburn (Sean Patrick Flannery), have been dropped behind enemy lines. Their mission is to protect the man who has been chosen to lead Germany after Hitler’s death but, after the assassination fails, Blackburn and his men find themselves with a new mission. Working with a group of Russian soldiers, Blackburn tries to prevent a group of Nazis from fleeing to Argentina with a cache of stolen good.
Jack Mason (Ice-T) has been living on the streets of Seattle ever since the death of his wife and daughter. When Cole (Charles S. Dutton), the friendly man at the soup kitchen, tells Mason that he can get him a job, the suicidal Mason accepts. It turns out that a group of wealthy men are going on a hunting trip and they need a guide to lead them through the wilderness. Mason accepts but, upon arriving, he discovers that the men (who are played by Rutger Hauer, F. Murray Abraham, William McNamara, John C. McGinley, and, of course, Gary Busey) are actually planning on playing the most dangerous game and hunting him for the weekend.
The Soldier is really only remembered for one scene. The Soldier (Ken Wahl) is being chased, on skis, across the Austrian Alps by two KGB agents, who are also on skis. The Soldier is in Austria to track down a KGB agent named Dracha (Klaus Kinski, who only has a few minutes of screen time and who is rumored to have turned down a role in Raiders of the Lost Ark so he could appear in this movie). The Russians want the Soldier dead because they’re evil commies. While being chased, the Soldier goes over a ski slope and, while in the air, executes a perfect 360° turn while firing a machine gun at the men behind him. It’s pretty fucking cool.
It’s hard out here for a pimp and even worse for a banker.
The year is 1989 and the Cold War is coming to an end. Colonel Jack Knowles (Roy Scheider) was a hero in Vietnam but now, years later, his eagerness to fight has made him an outsider in the U.S. Army. Most people would rather that Knowles simply retire but, as long as there are wars to be fought, Knowles will be there. His only friend, General Hackworth (Harry Dean Stanton), arranges for Knowles to be assigned to an outpost on the West German-Czechoslovakia border. As soon as he arrives, Knowles starts to annoy his superior officer, Lt. Col. Clark (Tim Reid). When Knowles sees a Czech refugee gunned down by the Soviets while making a run for the border, he unleashes his frustration by throwing a snowball at his Russian counterpart. Like Knowles, Col. Valachev (Jurgen Prochnow) is a decorated veteran who feels lost without a war to fight. Knowles and Valachev are soon fighting their own personal war, even at the risk of starting a full-scale conflict between their two nations.
The year is 1962. Lights flash over California and the news on the radio is bad. What everyone feared has happened. Atomic war has broken out and the world is about to end. Refugees clog the highways as a mushroom cloud sprouts over Los Angeles. This is year zero, the year that humanity will either cease to exist or try to begin again.
The year is 2012 and New York City, like the rest of the world, has been devastated by energy shortages, wars, and a great plague. The few survivors now live in isolated communes and are easily victimized by roving gangs of marauders. (On the plus side, this version of New York City has been spared Bill de Blasio.) The Baron (Max von Sydow) has managed to keep his people safe by ruling with an iron hand but he knows that it will only be a matter of time until his commune is overrun by the psychotic Carrot (William Smith) and his men. When a mysterious warrior known only as Carson (Yul Brynner) comes to the commune, the Baron tasks him with a very important mission: help his pregnant daughter (Joanna Miles) escape from New York City and transport both her and some genetically modified seeds to an island in North Carolina.
The year is 1962 and Douglas MacArthur (Gregory Peck), the legendary general, visits West Point for one last time. While he meets the graduates and gives his final speech, flashbacks show highlights from MacArthur’s long military career. He leaves and then returns to Philippines. He accepts the Japanese surrender and then helps Japan rebuild and recover from the devastation of the war. He half-heartedly pursues the Presidency and, during the Korean War, gets fired by Harry Truman (Ed Flanders).
Through the Shattered Lens 