Winter Kills (1979)

everything you have heard about this movie is true.

Brilliant and touching

I am only giving this movie a 1 for the great cast, though I can't imagine what any of them were thinking. This movie was horrible

There's a more than satisfactory amount of boom-boom in the movie's trim running time.

Jeff Bridges' performance was pathetic, almost as pathetic as his character, whining over and over to get a totally unfit woman to marry him. I wanted to barf. I found the Kennedy parallels overdone and distracting from a plot that wound up in implausible territory.No wonder this film isn't very available. I feel I wasted my time obtaining a copy and sitting through it.I must write 10 lines, so it was a trip as usual to see John Huston in a role, and Elizabeth Taylor in a cameo, even sporting extra weight.I guess they mean 10 lines not counting spaces, so I am going to find out by writing 10 lines, even though this film doesn't deserve 10.

Nineteen years after JFK was killed (by whom?) and five years after Watergate, this one puts the whole conspiracy theory industry in its place. One of the funniest films I have seen for a very long time - anyone who still thinks that Americans don't do irony (always a stupid claim but one which is made time and again) should see this. But it's bone-dry and very subtle, and I can understand how many people were puzzled and bemused by this when it was first released and that it did not do well commercially.Performances are universally excellent, tho' Jeff Bridge as the starry-eyed son trying to discover who killed his half-brother, the US president, and John Huston as the paterfamilias and caricature mega capitalist are treat. The plot is nonsensical, but then that is the whole point of a film which sends up conspiracy films something rotten and then some. Buy the video, because this really does bear watching again and again.

****MAJOR SPOILERS**** Obviously about the JFK assassination "Winter Kills" has all the major characters of that tragic event as well as the city that the assassination happened in, Dallas Texas, moved to Philadelphia Pa. On the afternoon of February 22, 1960 president Tim Kegan, played by Virginia Senator John Warner, was brutally gunned down outside of the Philadelphia City Hall by a lone assassin a drifter named Willie Arnold. Arnold never lived to go to trial when he himself was shot and killed by nightclub owner, and Mafia connected, Joe Diamond, Eli Wallach. With the Pickering Commission determining that Arnold was the lone assassin and Diamond was just a patriotic American who took the law into his own hands, in gunning down Arnold, all the answers to Presdent Kegan's murder was finally put to rest. That's until Arthur Fletcher, Joe Spinell, pops up out of nowhere some 19 years later.Falling or being pushed from a oil rig Fletcher knowing that he doesn't have long to live wants to come clean in his involvement in the President Kegan assassination. Flown to a freighter when the late President Kegan's brother Nick, Jeff Bridges,the boats skipper is on Fletcher tells the startled young man that he was the one who pulled the trigger that killed his brother some 20 years ago. To prove that he's telling the truth Fletcher also gives Nick information where the murder weapon, a telescopic snipers rife, with his fingerprints on it can be found! Hidden in a steam pipe on the third floor, the snipers nest, at the Philadelphia Engerson Building!Rushing over to the city of "Brotherly Love" Nick together with his late brother's top political adviser Miles Garner, David Spielberg, and Philly police Captain Hiller, Brad Dexter, find the murder weapon with a note written by Fletcher attached to it just were, the by now late, Fletcher said it would be. Within minutes of finding the snipers rife both Garner & Capt. Hiller are gunned down with Nick running for his life and the killers gun, in all the confusion, disappearing!On a crusade to find his brothers killer, or killers, Nick gets involved with a slew of sleazy and unsavory characters from Mafia Kingpin Frank Mayo, Tomas Milian, to the notorious D.C Madam Lola Comante, Elizabeth Taylor. Nick also gets in contact with this mysterious weirdo John Cerreui, Anthony Perkins, an employee of his dad Pa Kegan, John Huston, electronic snooping or spying empire. Cerreui an eavesdropping expert in the end clues Nick in, after he broke both his arms, who was really behind his brothers assassination! Someone very very close to him.Overly complicated but extremely entertaining movie that covers all the bases in who was responsible in Presiden Kegan's murder. Nick is lead on a number of wild goose chases by those whom he trusts who in the end were murdered themselves, because they knew too much, in who President Tim Kegan's killer or the man who had him killed was.It turns out that Tim's rise to power in becoming President of the United States was financed by both mob and big business money. With him in office Tim was then ordered, by those who put him there, to "take out" Cuban President and Dictator Fidel Castro but refused to go through with it. Castro having thrown the Mob and it's business partners out of the country had cost them tens of million of dollars and now, in retaliation, they want him "hit". The problem is that President Kegan in not wanting to start a world war, with Castro's ally the USSR coming to his defense, wouldn't give orders to the CIA to "hit" him! So in response to President Kegan's double-cross, of the mob and its fellow or business travelers, he was "hit" instead! The big question in Nick's mind is who was the person who order or set up the "hit"!Heart dropping final at the now defunct Pan Am Building in Midtown Manhattan with Nick coming face to face with the person who set his brother Tim up for the kill. Holding on for dear life, on a balcony high atop the Pan Am Building, the "Big Cheese" behind President Kegan's assassination lets it all out about some crazy scheme of his, in transferring his millions to Brazil, as he slowly slips to his death and into oblivion! Right through the middle of a giant American flag attached to the building!

As much a buried treasure as any film could be, WINTER KILLS is spellbinding. Following a densely plotted film is never easy, but here is a film so rich and full of quirky touches, it's a pleasure to watch. Jeff Bridges is the younger step brother of an assassinated US President. He stumbles upon the actual culprit(s) behind the killing, learning way more than he ever wanted. His ancient, albeit highly libidinous, father is played with gusto by the great John Huston. Anthony Perkins and Richard Boone are Huston's aides (one good, one bad...you figure it out!) The film digresses here and there and probably has one too many subplots and false leads, but it's extremely entertaining and certainly something that should be sought out. The rest of the supporting cast includes Eli Wallach, Belinda Bauer, Toshiro Mifune (a very brief cameo). Elizabeth Taylor (looking stunning) pops up in a surprisingly small but pivotal role.