Parkland (2013)

Until the horrific terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 there was arguably no date more infamous in post-World War II America than that of November 22, 1963. It was on that day nearly 50 years ago that our 35th President, John F. Kennedy was shot and killed while riding in his motorcade through Dallas, Texas.

The imagery and details of that day are unforgettable even for those of us who were born long after it happened: a magic bullet, Jackie's pink suit and matching pillbox hat, the Zapruder film, the book depository, Lee Harvey Oswald, Walter Cronkite choking up, and of course those rumors of a second gunman on the grassy knoll. These elements have pervaded the popular culture through an endless supply of films, documentaries, TV specials, books, and more conspiracy theories than you can shake a stick it, but a new film seeks to tell the full story of that day and the days that followed by giving us a glimpse of the more peripheral characters and the roles they played.

Named after Parkland Memorial Hospital where both President Kennedy and Lee Harvey Oswald were brought with their gunshot wounds, Parkland enlists a remarkable cast under first time director Peter Landesman to give us the untold story of the day that changed America forever. Naturally, a good chunk of the film takes place in the hospital where doctors (Zac Efron and Colin Hanks) and nurses (Marcia Gay Harden) fight in vain to save the life of the president and then also his assassin. But this is much more than a medical drama. We also spend significant amounts of screentime with Abraham Zapruder (Paul Giamatti) who shot the only known footage of the actual assassination, an FBI agent (Ron Livingston) who was investigating Oswald prior to the shooting, Oswald's mother (Jacki Weaver) and brother (James Badge Dale) living in the aftermath, and members of the Secret Service who are not only coping with the first loss of a president on their watch but getting him back to Washington, DC despite laws requiring that body remain in Texas.

The highlight for me was without a doubt Giamatti as Zapruder. In the film he kind of represents the one "normal guy" witness to the event that we get to meet. He is a man traumatized by what he has seen but is also forced to relive it when it is discovered by a federal agent (Billy Bob Thornton) that he captured the whole thing on film. Knowing instantly that he has become a sort of custodian to a piece of history, we get to see Zapruder very protectively work with the feds to development the film (a new technology at the time) and then agonize over selling it to the press in hopes that it only be used tastefully. It is such a small slice of history but with him being the only character in the film without close, personal ties to either the President or Oswald, he sort of becomes the everyman that we relate to and latch onto most.

On the flip side of that, it is hard to not also get a little bit wrapped up in the family of Oswald as they cope with the news that he probably killed the president in very different ways. Oswald's brother Robert is clearly in shock and embarrassed by the whole thing despite putting up a strong front, while his mother seems to teeter on the edge of sanity by almost being proud of it. The real meat of their story comes out though when we get to witness their funeral for Oswald where only reporters are available to help be pallbearers and move his coffin to the burial site.

Another point of high fascination is the struggle to move the President's body from Parkland Memorial to Air Force One for a flight back to DC. Texas law required a medical examination to take place in the case of a murder which therefore would've forced the President's body to remain behind, but Secret Service agents (led by an ever dreamy Tom Welling) essentially fought their way out of Parkland with the casket and then forcibly shoved it onto Air Force One with a somewhat lack of respect for the dead.

All fascinating historical tidbits asides it's hard to call Parkland anything much more than a mediocre film. Sure, everything is competent enough on a technical level and the actors all turn in believable work in their respective roles (yes, even Efron as a heart surgeon), but the gap here is really on a script and conceptual level. The various pieces don't really come together to make any grand statement and when all is said and done the film kind of forgets about the man at the heart of it all: John F. Kennedy. In dealing with only the minutiae of that day and the days that followed we lose a sense of why this is all still worth talking about in the first place. Who was the man that we lost that day? How did his untimely death change us as a nation? Why are so many still so moved by his loss?

One might argue that these questions have been asked and answered in other formats and other films but I can't help but think that by skipping over them Parkland lost it's chance to have a bigger impact that could have been as memorable as the real event itself. Instead, it is merely a film of anecdotes calling for it's larger narrative.

Grade: B-