If you wanted to see a JFK film that pretty much nailed every great moment, as well as some great failures of President Kennedy’s life then look no further than JFK Remembered: 50 Years Later. It does an amazing job showing some of the huge highlights of the man’s life.
On this DVD, you’ll see his face-to-face election with President Nixon, his beginning struggles with his presidency, his no-nonsense attitude about Russia moving bombs into Cuba (and training the Cubans) and all the events that led up to his assassination. For anyone who loves history, politics or is a teacher of either/both, this is a perfect type of addition to the DVD/Blu-ray shelf.
With that said, the documentary does have some editing issues. When it switches back and forth between public and personal life footage, it kind of throws the flow of the documentary off a bit, sometimes confusingly. For example, when Kennedy is giving his speech about outer space and goes into great detail of the accomplishments and hopes of the American government with bringing people to the moon, you want more footage of the space program prepping for such things. As soon as that footage is complete and you’re waiting for some NASA footage to support the speech the documentary suddenly shifts to footage of Kennedy at his home in Virginia. The transition from one to another is not smooth and it kind of slows things down a bit when they should get rolling. Even the narration from one to the next seems a bit lost in translation. There are quite a few moments like this, but it doesn’t throw the entire thing off at all, just a bit.
Overall, like I stated before, if you’re looking for a bit of history of JFK rolled up into one DVD then this is probably the DVD for you. JFK Remembered: 50 Years Later does a good job of summing up his life in beautiful highlights and powerful, sometimes personal footage. For the history folks out there, it’s something you want for your DVD/Blu-ray library.
Warner Home Video did a superb job with transferring and putting together some of the best footage in John F. Kennedy’s life. You get a great amount of footage from his private life (such as footage when he was a young man and footage of his family at their Virginia home), as well as some gorgeous footage of his speeches. Two of the best pieces of footage on the DVD is his speech on outer space and his speech at American University on the need to avoid nuclear war and concentrate on peace. While not all of the footage is particularly clean, it’s certainly now preserved on DVD in the best possible way. It’s a very well transferred set of footage into one documentary. Kudos to Warner Home Video and to director Robert Kline.
Sadly, there are no features.