Unshakable, witty and deeply felt, the film will be paying emotional dividends for a long, long time.

Great story, amazing characters, superb action, enthralling cinematography. Yes, this is something I am glad I spent money on.

The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

The JFK assassination might well be the biggest enigma in modern American history. Exactly what happened in Dealy Plaza on November 22, 1963 and why has been the subject of much speculation and interest. So it's no surprise then that filmmakers have taken a few cracks at exploring it, especially in the wake of Oliver Stone's 1991 film JFK. It was very shortly after JFK's release that John Mackenzie's Ruby hit cinema screens which was unfortunate as the film came to be overlooked. That wasn't a terrible thing though as watching the film reveals.I first saw Ruby around 2003 or so when the A&E channel here would run a film with commercials on TV around seven in the morning. Watching Ruby again on DVD now I realize how much was cut out of the film for that airing of it, around twenty minutes or so, and how that wasn't a bad thing. At ninety minutes or so the film moved along at a good pace but at its full running time it's far too long and complicated for its own good.Which is something that can be blamed on thing more than anything else: the script by Stephen Davis. Davis tries to use Ruby, himself something of an enigmatic figure, to tie together various strands of its own theory about the JFK assassination. The film takes the viewer from Dallas to Cuba, New Orleans, Las Vegas, and back to Dallas in the space of a little under two hours and often stretching believability to its limits along the way. A perfect example is an early sequence taking Ruby to Castro's Cuba which actually doesn't add much of anything to the overall film except add an additional character who does little and add more running time to the film. Other times it feels like Davis is just trying to show off his research such as adding Dallas police officer Tippit (played by a pre X-Files David Duchovny), allegedly killed by Oswald after the assassination, who is introduced early in the film and then never reappears. In the end, Davis' script tries to explain and condense so much that it becomes a muddled mess.That isn't the only problem with the script. The dialogue throughout is pretty atrocious, full of little more than clichés and exposition. That extends to the characters as well as virtually everyone in the film feels like a walking, talking cardboard cliché from Ruby (portrayed as a mobster with a heart of gold) to Candy Cane (the seemingly innocent girl who receives an education in how the world work) as well as various mobsters and government figures along the way. There's also some vast and quite obvious fictionalizations of people and events (such as Candy Cane who takes on elements of several different women to the point of being utterly unbelievable) that, along with the dialogue and characterizations, end up undermining the attempts at credibility that other elements of the film try so hard to obtain. It's a script that might be a passable for a TV movie but for a Hollywood feature film is sorely lacking.Why is a shame because there's good to be found in the film. The period recreations are quite good and do a solid job of invoking the early 1960s, especially in Las Vegas and Dallas from sets to costumes. If nothing else, the film is worth seeing for what looks to have been some expensive period recreations and for having actually shot scenes in Dallas as well. Overall, the film is stylishly made with not just wonderful production values but also some solid cinematography from Phil Méheux and direction from John Mackenzie. The only sour note production wise is the score from John Scott which never quite seems to mesh with the film outside of its use of source music, feeling like it was meant for another film entirely. On the whole though, on a purely production level, it's well made.Which brings us to the cast. The two leads, Danny Aiello and Sherilyn Fenn as Ruby and Candy Cane respectively, both turn in solid performances given the material they have to work from. Fenn in particular comes across quite well, turning in a solid performance while also looking stunning in period clothing. The supporting cast tries to do their best with sometimes awkward material that they end up often being wasted such as Marc Lawrence's mob boss and Arliss Howard as mysterious CIA agent Maxwell. It's a shame really because the cast could have done so much more one feels like.Indeed that sentiment sums up the entire film. Ruby tries to tell an interesting and compelling story, telling it with excellent period recreations and what should be a good cast. Instead it tells an overlong and muddled tale full of bad dialogue. Despite some of its finer points, Ruby ends up being a fairly forgettable film on an interesting subject that fails to say much of anything.

John Mackenzie directed this speculative drama that stars Danny Aiello as Jack Ruby, the man who fatally shot Lee Harvey Oswald, and the events that led him there, where he was the owner of a Dallas strip club who hires popular headliner Candy Cane(played by Sherilyn Fenn) who ends up under the wing of the mafia, and becomes a mistress of President Kennedy. Ruby does favors for the mafia while simultaneously informing on them for the FBI, and eventually is used by a mysterious hit man for either the CIA or Mafia to kill Oswald, though he suspects he's as much a patsy as Oswald seems to be. David Duchovny co-stars as police officer Tibbet. Despite a good performance by Aiello, film is a pale knockoff of the far superior "JFK". Not bad, but entirely forgettable.

Lets start this review on a good note: Sherilyn Fenn is a stunner in this film. She's absolutely gorgeous. Her acting, of course, is terrible given the poor script she had to work with (Candy Cane? What about Sticky Sweet?). However, her strip-tease scenes alone almost make it worth sitting through this 111 minutes of celluloid dung.That being said, I'll repeat my summary, that this is possibly the worst film I've ever seen. I'm a big fan of mob movies. I'm also a student of the Kennedy assassination, so when films address this topic, or attempt to reference the event, I like it when they at least TRY to address the facts. JFK made a brave attempt at this, even though it made Garrison look like the saint of all good causes (he wasn't), and accused everyone but the Pope of being involved in the plot.Ruby is just a bad movie, pure and simple. What made Ruby so bad wasn't the actors per se, but the terrible writing, which was non-stop speculation and fantasy, and the direction, which seemed non existent. Aiello, like Fenn, did the best with what he had, but his performance was laughable. He had to portray Ruby as a mobster with a heart, and if I had heard any more exasperated cries of "Candy Cane!" from him, I was going to puke. All the stereotypical mob elements, and actors, are in this film. Even Joe Viterelli, who like Frank Vincent seems to be in every mob movie, makes an appearance here as Joe Valachi.Yes, Ruby was a hood from Chicago, and he shot Oswald, and he associated with elements of the mafia, and he was chummy with the Dallas cops, and he went to Cuba on occasion. At least the film got this right, but that's where it ends. Ruby killed a mobster with a .38 hidden inside a movie camera? Ruby was in the same hotel in Las Vegas with a red-haired David Ferrie when Kennedy was getting laid? That's news to me. That same night, The Sun (The Sands), featured Tony Montana (Frank Sinatra), while Santos Alicante (Santos Trafficante) and the boys hosted Appalachia II right out in the public eye. Sure. Besides trying to avoid a lawsuit with all the reworked names (they did properly refer to a Sam Giancana though), the film muddles through bad plot lines with this kind of tie-it-all-together nonsense.And what was with the mysterious Maxwell character played by Arliss Howard? "I know everything Jack. Here Jack, here's a rifle. Go kill Castro. And by the way, who's the girl?" Absurd.Don't waste your time seeing this film, unless you are a Sherilyn Fenn fanatic. Fast forward, play the first strip scene, fast forward, play the last strip scene, eject, then toss it in the garbage, where it belongs.

A fascinating subject, that just didn't grab the audience. It flowed like molasses, and left me feeling as flat as the movie. I'm one of those who can't get enough of this subject, but there was very little here at all, and with the current trend to change the true stories, just to make them look better, you begin to wonder just how much, and which parts, are really true.