Whatever his role may or may not have been in the Kennedy assassination, Jack Ruby was not a good or nice man. Trying to make anything positive out of him is imbecilic to start with and the premises for this picture don't improve any on that. Danny Aiello playing Ruby as a kind person is out of touch.There were in 1963 more than 200 million Americans so tell me what the odds are that three people who know each other closely and work together could all independently have some role in the assassination? Jack Ruby's bartender just happens to be the gunman who fires the fatal shot from the book depository window? Come on now.Anything of intelligence is hard to find in this story and there is as much evidence to support the theory that Rootie Kazootie was the gunman as there is evidence or believability for the first concept here.So far as film-making goes we can only grade C+. Never really makes you much take notice and when they get to what should be the climax they just rush through it with even less thought or effort.At worst this epistle is an insult to history. The liner notes on the inexpensive VHS I found state "forces us to reconsider the 'truth' of Kennedy's death." Well, horsepoop to that, but I will reconsider wasting time on any film by John MacKenzie. If the same mysterious shadowy people held a gun to his head and forced him to film a bad script, well then let him come forward before someone has to make another bad movie so we can find that out too.

The reason why Jack Ruby Killed Lee Harvey Oswald was had he not done so he would have been killed himself. Sam Giancana had put Ruby in charge of the JFK assassination, and part of the plan was for Officer Tippett to kill Oswald as he was trying to escape. That didn't happen, for reasons unknown, so Ruby had to finish the job himself.The real question is how was Jack Ruby able to walk right up to the most heavily guarded man in America, guarded as he was by Secret Service, FBI, CIA, Texas State Troopers, and Dallas Police, and shoot him at point blank range. That alone should tell you that Lee Harvey Oswald did not act alone.The government would tell you that Ruby acted alone, for reasons of grief and rage, etc, but they don't want you to know the truth. They don't think we could handle the truth. They don't want us to know that JFK and his father made a deal with Sam Giancana to get elected and, once elected, the Kennedys reneged on their end of the deal.By the way, did you know that Lee Harvey Oswald was raised by his uncle in New Orleans, who was a bookie, and did you know that in 1963 all bookmakers worked for the mob? Why would the New Orleans District Attorney (Garrison) get involved in a crime that took place in Dallas? It is all related.Did you know that several weeks after the JFK assassination the Texas State Attorney General held a press conference and announced that Oswald worked for the CIA? Did you know that Oswald attended Naval Intelligence School, and shortly thereafter he went to Russia, officially as a US dissenter, but more likely as a spy?

I did not expect much of this movie, but as a (none too serious) collector of Americana I was pleasantly surprised. The movie Ruby reminded me most of – and which might have inspired the script – is John Cassavete's Killing of a Chinese Bookie – which, in turn, might have been inspired by the life and times of the real Ruby. The biopic Hoffa, scripted by David Mamet, also comes to mind.The one problem this movie seems to have is that it sits uncomfortably between mainstream cinema and art-house material. This becomes most apparent in the bombastic, completely unsuitable musical score which wants to make some kind of Godfather out of Ruby. But for the rest, this movie is well worth some time of the viewers attention.It opens with a frontal shot of Ruby's face. He starts talking: „You're sitting somewhere in a motel room, alone and miserable, and the telephone starts ringing". This introduction of a strip act in his club pretty accurately describes Ruby's circumstances. He is a kind of a displaced person who does not seem to belong anywhere, waiting for a call. His activities seem pretty incoherent, his grasp of what is happening around him uncertain. He is proud to be a member of the show business industry, where dreams come true.Had this movie been less mainstream, I imagine that many scenes concerning the events before the assassination of the President would have had a more dreamlike atmosphere. I would like to believe that a lot of what is going on in the movie is going on uniquely in Ruby's head, the head of a lonely man who is about to loose his sanity and strives to gain a certain presence, a certain stature. The script accommodates such a viewpoint which probably comes closest to Ruby's motives for shooting the man who shot the President.The acting is mostly very good. Danny Aiello's and Sherilyn Fenn's performances were brilliant, the good chemistry between them makes the relationship between Ruby and his „dream woman" special and heartwarming. It also defines Ruby as someone who cares, probably another motive for his action. I am a big fan of Marc Lawrence who is absolutely terrific as the head mobster. He does not speak more than four or five sentences and yet his presence is awesome. The assassination of the President is reenacted with subtlety and tact – much better than in Stone's JFK. I found the casual way in which the real locations in Dallas were introduced absolutely stunning. The editing between TV stock material and specially filmed details is masterful.

Disappointing film about Jack Ruby, the man who gunned down Lee Harvey Oswald with Aiello giving his all for the title character, but even his talents cannot save the tedious script.