Parkland Reviews
October 6, 2013
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-
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-
October 4, 2013
A detailed, poetic panorama of days and people directly caught up in the assassination of President Kennedy.
October 6, 2013
Heck, they don't even have Lee Harvey Oswald saying he's just a patsy. C'mon people watch a good news documentary on the events and then build your script, as you will.
I guess this was the Zapruder/Oswald family version of events.
I feared this might add nothing new. It sure didn't. Apparently, I knew going in than the screenwriter. The movie actually gets things wrong and in a struggle to refresh our view of well-known events avoids about every iconic moment in this terrible tragedy.
Heck, they don't even have Lee Harvey Oswald saying he's just a patsy. C'mon people watch a good news documentary on the events and then build your script, as you will.
I guess this was the Zapruder/Oswald family version of events.
Bruce P.
October 6, 2013
Here's what I posted on Facebook to my high school friends, who also lived through the events of this movie:
Just saw the movie Parkland today, and although it was both intense and wrenching (almost non-stoip), I'm glad I saw it and think it was very well done. I was relieved that my home turf of Oak Cliff, where Oswald was living at the time, was mentioned but not shown (I don't think that would have been easy, at least for me, to see again.). And some of the dialogue, especially a couple of things said by people in Dallas, was really awful to hear again. But the movie took dialogue from transcripts from those days, so I think it was all acurate as far as possible. I wound up feeling much more saddened for Robert Oswald than I ever thought I would, with his being thrown into the middle of a brother accused of killing the President and also their egotistical and almost deranged mother. But so many of the characters in the movie went through so much, that it was hard not to cry through a number of parts of it. I would recommend the movie but also caution that it's very intense and some parts not pretty at all. And if you lived through that time (like I did), it may bring a lot of it right back to you.
I saw this movie yesterday (Saturday 10/5) and liked it. I was born in the Oak Cliff section of Dallas and grew up there (and was 12 years old when these event happened), so I'm willing to forgive some of the shortcomings of this movie. I thought that a number of the actors did an outstanding job, and especially James Badge Dale as Robert Oswald, the older brother of Lee Harvey Oswald.
Here's what I posted on Facebook to my high school friends, who also lived through the events of this movie:
Just saw the movie Parkland today, and although it was both intense and wrenching (almost non-stoip), I'm glad I saw it and think it was very well done. I was relieved that my home turf of Oak Cliff, where Oswald was living at the time, was mentioned but not shown (I don't think that would have been easy, at least for me, to see again.). And some of the dialogue, especially a couple of things said by people in Dallas, was really awful to hear again. But the movie took dialogue from transcripts from those days, so I think it was all acurate as far as possible. I wound up feeling much more saddened for Robert Oswald than I ever thought I would, with his being thrown into the middle of a brother accused of killing the President and also their egotistical and almost deranged mother. But so many of the characters in the movie went through so much, that it was hard not to cry through a number of parts of it. I would recommend the movie but also caution that it's very intense and some parts not pretty at all. And if you lived through that time (like I did), it may bring a lot of it right back to you.
October 5, 2013
A 101 on how to make a fascinating subject really boring. Aside from some effective moments and performances, "Parkland" is a bland, dull, uninspired telling of the Kennedy assassination that shockingly feels pointless.
October 5, 2013
the story was amazing. also the performances were all spot on. reminded me similiar to Oliver Stone's JFK.
October 4, 2013
I think the critics complaints are for the most part baseless. This movie is a great new approach to a story that has been told time and time again. The weakest link is the use of actors to portray John and Jackie Kennedy and Lee Harvey Oswald. Should have stayed totally on hospital staff and other people we don't know about.
cinematografo
October 4, 2013
Not too clear about the negative reviews. That horrific day has been treated with respect and we did, indeed, get to see moments never before shown, like Zapruder's decision to sell the film to Life magazine and the Oswald brother's meeting. During our recent screening, I heard men sniffling. It has impact and young people should see it.
October 3, 2013
Okay cast and okay movie. I was expecting this to be one of the best historical movies I've ever seen and it ended up being one of the worst.
October 2, 2013
Wonderfully conceived and crafted of a time in history that still retains its human poignancy for those of us who lived and where effected by the specious series of events.
September 7, 2013
First part way too sensationalist with the amount of blood there, second part gets better with giamatti and welling.
August 29, 2013
I have to wait until September 20th?!?! grrr! I'll wait patiently but I don't think I completely approve of Zac Efron being in a movie about JFK assassination...i mean as long as the Troy Bolton side of him doesn't come out I think we will be ok, but im still a bit nervous.
