Marketic It's no definitive masterpiece but it's damn close.

Jacomedi A Surprisingly Unforgettable Movie!

StyleSk8r At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

Phillida Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

Milan "Winter Kills" is a kind of a movie that works on several levels and does a good job in each and every one of them. It mixes black comedy, with political satire, mystery and conspiracy to create a dazzling mix up of possible assassination scenarios that anybody who tried to untangle it, ultimately gave up. Black comedy part show the ridicule of the system in which the quest for more power and money eats it's own children, and everything is crazy on purpose. Houston is great as Bridges' kingpin father and Perkins is a fabulous casting choice as the central figure that shows lunacy of the world of surveillance on everybody and everything."Winter Kills" can only appear silly to those who find air-tight logic in the Warren Commission, "lone gunmen" and "magic bullet" theories. Others who don't find those stories plausible or even sane, can find something for themselves in the movies such as "JFK", "Executive action" and "Winter kills", which shows the same topic in a different light. Worth seeing and even keeping.

MisterWhiplash Until recently that was. If you're a Jeff Bridges fan and look over his previous body of work on IMDb or netflix, you're soon to come across what looks like a small paranoid assassination/conspiracy thriller from the late 1970s- penned by Manchurian Candidate himself Richard Condon- Winter Kills. And then you'll realize until now you've never heard of the movie, unless you were around for the two weekends it was in release in 1979 or heard the minor blurbs how the picture went through ridiculous difficulty getting made. While one shouldn't group the making of the movie too closely with the final product itself, it's almost as crazy a story as in the film itself (one involving the mob, pornographers, marijuana money, and a re-shoot budgeted by *another* movie shot by the same director in-between in Germany).So, as a humble 'who-is-this-guy' movie-buff on this site, I humbly recommend this movie incredibly so. It's a mighty sleeper, a comedy with the intent so black that it's hard to see where the drama stops and the laughs begin. At times it's also weirdly over-the-top (an orgasm at one point is the loudest one has ever seen in a non-porn, and for no real reason except to have it in there, or as part of an "act" perhaps), and with a cast that is irreproachable. Jeff Bridges, John Huston, Anthony Perkins, Sterling Hayden, Eli Wallach, Toshiro Mifune, Elizabeth Taylor - and most of these actors are barely in one scene! Yet everybody leaves there mark so indelibly that one grins from ear to ear suddenly recognizing them (Hayden in particular is a hoot as he practically is like Jack D. Ripper as an old man with a huge beard and a private fleet of tanks)(Huston, too, chews up the scenes he's in without even trying).The plot... geez, I can't really say for certain. Let's just call a spade a spade and say it's a spoof on the Kennedy conspiracy (if there was one), and the power and influence of family and politics and the mob. It's a murder mystery, but it almost becomes moot who was the real killer as by the time its uncovered it's simply more fun seeing how one gets from point A to point B. Though Condon might have had a stronger plot for 'Candidate', and first time director Bill Reichert stumbles in a couple of spots in getting the comedy and suspense mixing just right, it's still amazing entertainment more often than not, and it's one of those nifty, strange treasures to be dug out from the video store or queued on a whim on netflix.

sol ****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!

Paul With an absolutely amazing cast and crew, this might have been a classic. Instead it is a repetitive paraphrasing of all the conspiracy theories extant in 1979 about the JFK assassination grafted, rather pointlessly, on to a vaguely incoherent plot about the murder of fictitious president Kegan in 1960. Many superb character actors are wasted as they are either not given enough to do - Sterling Hayden or Eli Wallach, for instance, or they are asked to go rather luridly over the top - John Huston. Jeff Bridges and Anthony Perkins do manage to acquit themselves very well, in their very different ways, though.The photography is gorgeous, but does not justify an hour and a half of your life, or the price of the DVD purchase.