Parkland

Front row seat to US history: "Too much, too ugly, too fast"
"Parkland" (2013 release; 93 min.) brings the story of the events surrounding John F. Kennedy's assassination in Dallas on November 22, 1963. The movie doesn't waste any time and in the initial scenes we get to briefly meet the various players who'd become intimately involved in the events of that day: the Secret Service guys, the FBI guys, the accidental witnesses to the assassination, the doctors and nurses at Parkland Memorial Hospital, and of course the President and his immediate entourage. The initial 15 min. or so of the movie make ample use of the archive footage that exists from JFK's visit to Forth Worth and Dallas. After being shot, the President is taken to Parkland, where a young doctor (played by Zac Efron) at first is overwhelmed with the task at hand, and then gives his all in trying to save the President's life. A couple of major story lines eventually emerge: Abraham Zapruder (played by Paul Giamatti) films the entire sequence of events with his new 8 mm camera, and...

The Fall of Lancer
"Parkland," released shortly in advance of the 50th anniversary of the assassination of JFK (whose White House codename was "Lancer"), is a depiction of the events in Dallas surrounding the shooting, based upon Vincent Bugliosi's book "Four Days In November." That book was in turn taken from the factual background portion of Bugliosi's much longer book that argued Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in the assassination. So going in, this is a work that is based on the known facts of the assassination, without getting into any of the conspiracy theories. (If you want to see a movie drenched in that topic, watch Oliver Stone's "JFK" instead). Leaving aside "JFK" and the various TV documentaries and miniseries, I don't think there has been a straightforward major movie depiction of the events in Dallas like this before. While movie critics have not been enthusiastic about "Parkland," I thought that it was very good, even if there are portions of it that could have been better...

Excellent Drama Recreating The JFK Assassination Immediate Aftermath
Having recently watched a small handful of documentaries recounting the known facts and some of the ardent speculation relating to the JFK assassination, I went into Parkland not really knowing what to expect, but I was mostly pleased with the film's dedication to depicting most of the known facts in a non-political fashion. Being familiar with some of the facts, I can say that, largely, they do a pretty solid job, though the take some modest liberties in order to present some moments a bit more dramatically for a theatrical audience; still these are small details that don't amount to historical revisionism so much as they are creative choices -- when you only have two hours to explore the details, you do have some limitations. If anything, I'd have to say some of the portrayals may've been a bit too dry (Billy Bob has only a handful of scenes, and its hard to sense any real grounding for his character, though he has one nice shouting moment that underscores an intense dedication to...

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