Winter Kills is one of the strangest films I've ever watched. But if you like to feast on ham acting than this is the film you've been waiting for all your life.

The story has young Jeff Bridges hearing the deathbed confession of a man who says he was the unknown second gunman who killed Bridges's brother, the President of the United States 19 years earlier. Which would roughly be the gap in age between John F. Kennedy and Edward M. Kennedy in real life, a bit less for the Kennedys.

But Bridges has never had any interest in politics, in fact hasn't had much interest in anything, but has enough money to indulge his idleness, courtesy of father John Huston. This confession does renew his interest and he pursues his own investigation with Huston's backing somewhat.

After this as Bridges continues his quest you will see some of the best acting talent around all try to outdo the others. Huston tops them because he has more screen time, but Sterling Hayden as the crazed rightwing millionaire and Eli Wallach as the gay nightclub owner who shoots the arrested assassin like Jack Ruby in real life really earn some honorable mention. You usually have to see a horror film to find this much over the top thespianism.

Winter Kills treads ever so gently into satire, but only tiptoeing because the film seems unsure of itself. It's like the director and writers didn't know what direction to take and decided to let the players figure it out for themselves.

This is not a great film, but if not taken too seriously can be enjoyed on some levels.

Nick Kegan (Jeff Bridges) is the son of powerful tycoon Pa Kegan (John Huston). His half-brother Timothy Kegan was the US President who got assassinated 19 years earlier. Out of the blue, an associate brings in a dying burn victim who claims to be the unknown second gunman in the assassination. Nick starts doing his own investigation as people die all around him. John Cerruti (Anthony Perkins) is the mystery figure working for his father.

I would describe this as The Big Lebowski being in the movie JFK. It's weird and oddly ill-fitting. It has Jeff Bridges' slacker vibe but his character is not exactly a slacker. He's more an entitled dilettante. He's not complete clueless but he does struggle to buy a clue. It's obvious from the start where he's the sole survivor of an attack. The bad guys are deliberately avoiding to hurt him.

He's also not intense enough to be in a paranoid thriller. This is Kafkaesque but also as a black comedy except it has no laughs. It's surreal. Then there are the JFK allusions. It's weird to turn this dark chapter of American history into some sort of surreal black comedy. It's a lot of ill-fitting parts but it is still oddly interesting.

I will admit that it took nearly the entire running time of this political thriller with an acid tongue for me to really understand it and fully come to appreciate the method to its madness. From the author of "The Manchurian Candidate" (already made as a controversial movie) and "Prizzi's Honor" (filmed much later) comes this story of a powerful family where two sons are the hopefuls of patriarch John Huston, a man whose crudeness is a shadow to hide his ruthlessness and possible weakness in being basically a tragic Shakesperian like anti-hero. I see much of King Claudius of "Hamlet", "King Lear" and "Richard III" in him, as well as a bit of Shylock. Every word out of his mouth screams the privilege men in his position maintain, that is until they are caught and brought to their knees. In this case, it is his own son who will be the one responsible for that.

As the father of an assassinated President of the United States, there's more than a passing glimpse of Joe Kennedy in Huston's character, although I question if Joe Kennedy spoke as crudely as Huston does throughout this. He relishes harassing his surviving son Jeff Bridges with homophobic slurs. and can't get through one sentence without cursing or being sexually crude. Bridges wants to learn the truth behind his brother's assassination from years before, and his journey to finding out this truth will threaten his life and his birthright as he realizes the scourge of politically powerful families that leads them on that one way road to hell. Dorothy Malone is cast as Bridges' mother, not quite a Rose Kennedy with her brief appearance, but making it known that she is just as commanding as her husband is.

This film utilizes many other famous faces from the 1950's and 60's, with Sterling Hayden, Eli Wallach, Ralph Meeker, Toshiro Mifune and a certain violet eyed superstar who was married at the time to a real life Washington senator, that man here making a cameo as the murdered brother. The appearance of this delightfully beautiful and outlandishly made up diva makes it perfectly clear that the silent character she plays (silently mouthing one brief bit of dialog) is as involved in the big boy's club of politics as much as the men are. The film wisely keeps the viewer questioning everything going on until the final confrontation at the end which uses a giant American flag as a metaphor of how our political world continues to turn 40 years later.