Review: Virtual JFK: Vietnam If Kennedy Had Lived

Trailer of Virtual JFK

There's not much "virtual" in Kosi Masutani's thoughtful if artless documentary about the JFK administration — which is to its credit. Instead, the film explores Kennedy's response to threats of war during his three years in office to suggest what policy he might have pursued in Vietnam had he lived.

His successor, Lyndon Johnson, escalated the war into a debacle that ended with 58,000 Americans and countless Vietnamese dead. (For real "virtual" history, there's Oliver Stone's JFK, which proposes that Kennedy was done in because he opposed the war.)

The film passes on speculation in favor of facts, pointing out how on six occasions when war threatened — the Bay of Pigs, the Berlin Wall, and the Cuban Missile Crisis among them — Kennedy, despite great pressure, kept the peace. Perhaps more telling than the tragedy of Kennedy is that of Johnson, whose Great Society was eclipsed by an endless war. The current president should take note.