Parkland Reviews

It's only mildly successful in its attempt to recapture the chaotic events of that day, in part because the film itself is so chaotic in terms of its structure and focus.

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Landesman's film isn't about the Kennedy assassination so much as it is about the rippling effect it had on the ordinary people who dealt with its aftermath.

Full Review | Original Score: B

Pretentious and unproductive, it's a stylized postscript revealing no new insights or relevant information, nothing that historians and conspiracy theorists have not already rehashed.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/10

This is a meager kind of curiosity, telling us nothing about what the assassination meant historically or culturally.

Full Review | Original Score: 5.9/10

This episodic drama is set in Dallas during the three days after the JFK assassination, and some of it is highly charged.

Full Review | Original Score: B

By the end, Parkland does little more than exploit JFK's murder through a cinematic recreation - one that fails to shed new light or insight.

Full Review | Original Score: 1.5/5

Landesman doesn't really connect these stories other than through the tragedy itself -- and, taken separately, none of the stories has any great depth.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5

As someone who clearly remembers that November afternoon in 1963, and the days that followed, I was drawn to all of the detail in "Parkland."

Full Review | Original Score: 2.1/2

Peter Landesman creates a riveting look at those closest to the JFK assassination in Nov. 1963. New emotional life for a well-worn subject.

Full Review | Original Score: A

This movie never finds a groove.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5

The film wastes no time and packs every minute with information, revelations and conjectures.

Full Review | Original Score: B+

CliffNotes version of the Warren Commission Report.

Full Review | Original Score: C plus

Exactly what was the mood in Dallas prior to John F. Kennedy's stop there in 1963? He wasn't liked much, which was the point behind the visit. Lest we forget, "Parkland" reminds us that these things are true.

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For those of us who vividly remember those four days in November 1963 as if it were yesterday, "Parkland" is a fascinating retelling of one of the darkest times in America.

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"Parkland" finds those telling moments in the margins, tying them together to show an America trying and failing to process what it was living through.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4

Parkland's an experiment in historical regeneration, but one that so accurately stages the shock of a senseless tragedy that it earns a look.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5

A shouty acting exercise masquerading as history. Like Jobs before it, Parkland is a movie that seems to have been researched with exhaustive study of other movies and only a cursory skim of its own subject matter. DRAMA!

Full Review | Original Score: D+

Its scenes of bloodied doctors, panicked aides, and devastated Secret Service Agents are gripping, but Parkland is marred by Landesman's efforts to ensure that the historical importance of every moment is not lost on viewers.

Full Review | Original Score: 7/10

Somehow, all this commotion adds up to aimless inertia, in part because the movie lacks a point of view - let alone anything fresh to propose about the assassination or its peripheral players.

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Takes one of the most traumatizing events of the American 20th century and turns it into a trivia digest.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4