Excellent, a Must See

Bad Acting and worse Bad Screenplay

An action-packed slog

A Major Disappointment

Like many people I've read so much about the Kennedy Assassination that I know the names and stories and even the back stories of just about every character in this movie. And having read Bugliosi's books on the topic (both the short facts-only book on which this movie is based and also the very long, devastating thorough take-down of every conspiracy theory), I know the narrative practically the way Bugliosi presents it, minute by minute. Even so, I was gripped by this movie right from the beginning shortly before the assassination and stayed with it right to the poetic, pathetic ending where Oswald is buried in Fort Worth. At the end of the movie, I really felt wrung out.The movie operates a bit like a Greek tragedy, not just in its tragic arc, but also in the fact that it assumes that you the viewer generally know the story. This allows it to cover a huge amount of historical ground in just 90 effectively and efficiently presented minutes of drama. It's a remarkable achievement. There's ten times more info in this short film than in Oliver Stone's ridiculous "JFK" which is twice as long.Stone's 'JFK' indulges in some of the most unfocused teenage fantasizing ever filmed. 'Parkland' on the other hand presents without hype some aspects of the assassination story that show where the federal government did indeed fail: the failure to stop Oswald (the first of the "known wolves") and also the Secret Service's arrogant bullying of the Dallas coroner, in complete violation the governing law. If the Secret Service had followed the law instead of acting like the praetorian guard of a Roman emperor, there's a good chance that conspiracy theories could have died in the cradle as they should have. We'd never have had the questions that arose from the transportation of Kennedy's body back to Bethesda. The other big movie I want to compare this one to is James Cameron's 'Titanic', which is as ridiculous as Stone's 'JFK.' Why oh why did Cameron, having been handed one of the most copiously documented and most dramatic stories of all time, feel the need to embellish it with an adolescent love story? The director of 'Parkland' shows much more artistic discipline not to mention better taste. He knows he's got a helluva story and he sticks very closely to it. So this is a movie for grown-ups. In additional to being accurate history, it's a big black cup of hot drama, served up without cream or sugar. It'll certainly keep you awake.

Parkland was the name of the hospital that President Kennedy was taken to after being shot in Dallas and Peter Landesman's film deals with the events of that day and the days that followed. It's a somewhat better film than the critics gave it credit for though it doesn't add anything to either the truth or the legend and prefers instead to concentrate on how the assassination affected the people on the ground, the hospital staff, the secret service agents, the Oswald family etc.It's well cast and well played by some very talented players, (Marcia Gay Harden as a nurse, Billy Bob Thornton, Ron Livingston and David Harbour as secret service men, Paul Giametti as Abraham Zapruder, Jackie Weaver and James Badge Dale as Oswald's mother and brother; even Zac Efron as a young doctor who fails to save Kennedy's life is excellent). Landesman shoots it in a semi-documentary style which is fine though perhaps the editing is a little on the busy side; he doesn't seem to like to hold a frame for more than a few seconds at a time. I don't know, of course, how close any of this is to the facts but presumably the film was researched to within a few inches of its life and no matter how often this story has been told on screen it continues to be very moving.

I fear films like this, because I know if anyone ever makes one well enough, I might end up hating American cinema forever. Thankfully, I found this film to be executed poorly enough that I can breathe a sigh of relief."Parkland" is a super-somber, ponderous marathon of long silences between sparse dialog delivered with exaggerated whisper. Abrupt and remarkably volatile tantrums also occur, but can all but be counted with the fingers on one hand.In such ultra-slow motion, out comes a one-dimensional bore of a narrative that never pleads with conspiracy theorists to give up their presumably errant beliefs, but pretends no controversy ever existed in the first place. Perhaps the dubious design is to wear the theorists down until saliva drips from their gaping mouths.Otherwise superb actors (Thornton, Giamatti, Harden, and Efron) are lost among a generally weak cast. James Newton Howard adds a snail's-pace music soundtrack resembling a weeping choir that makes Brian Eno's "Music For Airports" sound like a frenetic, dizzying étude.But that's not the point. Those of us who have actually read Vincent Bugliosi's 1700-page tome know that the main purpose here is to debunk conspiracy theories (it is titled "Reclaiming History," after all). Unfortunately, even admiring Bugliosi's skills as a prosecutor and zealous advocate do not overcome the painful reality that he makes a horrifically misguided claim to also being an historian. He is no such thing.Those who know the conspiracy-friendly film "Kill the Messenger" also might be shocked to learn that its same screenwriter and producer also wrote and directed "Parkland." Other familiar names, including actors Tom Hanks and Bill Paxton, flesh out a rather lengthy list of producers.We have all seen the Zapruder film, which includes depiction of a large piece of JFK's scalp being torn almost completely off (footage even included in this film), so why during the opening do we see a completely intact head as JFK's body is being rolled into Parkland Memorial Hospital on a stretcher? Why so much effort to portray Agent Hosty's acts as merely a cover-up of ineptitude without even the hint of the controversy that raged in the newspapers that Oswald was supposed to have been an FBI informant and even kept Hosty's name in his address book? The only hint that Oswald might have been a trained agent provocateur (explaining his defection to the USSR and public displays of over-the-top Marxism) come from his mother, who is portrayed as a sociopath, with grief uncharacteristically emerging only at the end during her son's funeral. If only Robert Oswald had a crystal ball when scolding his brother for being such a bad father—in real life, the older daughter, Rachel Oswald Porter, graduated as the valedictorian of the University of Texas.Follow this moping maze of darkness if you must, but just for fun, read Mark Antony's famous soliloquy when it's all finished. This is not the last word.

Parkland shows how was the life of some people who were involved in the death of President John F. Kennedy. From the chaos, disbelief and horror at Parkland hospital that received President Kennedy (along with the disorder in the sad trip back to Washington with Kennedy's coffin), the suffering of who had the sad 'privilege' of filming great detail the murder, as the family of Lee Harvey Oswald took the stain to be related to the person murderer Kennedy. No shows ridiculous conspiracy theories, and focuses on the great historical or political moments, but shows us how, on any given day, these people took this unexpected horror. Not for nothing the best movie in the world, but it is certainly interesting to see this view of such an important and sad day in history.