Movie Review: Parkland (2013)

Genre: Historical Drama  

Director: Peter Landesman  

Starring: Zac Efron, Marcia Gay Harden, Paul Giamatti, Billy Bob Thornton, Jacki Weaver, James Badge Dale, Ron Livingston, Jeremy Strong  
Running Time: 93 minutes  

Synopsis: The film covers the events of November 22, 1963, when US President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, and the immediate aftermath. The multiple perspectives include dressmaker Abraham Zapruder (Paul Giamatti), who inadvertently captured the shooting on his 8mm camera; nurse Doris Nelson (Marcia Gay Harden) and doctor Jim Carrico (Zac Efron), who frantically tried to revive the President at Parkland Hospital; the shooter's brother Robert Oswald Jr. (James Badge Dale) and mother Marguerite (Jacki Weaver); and Agents Sorrels (Billy Bob Thornton) and Hosty (Paul Livingston) of the Secret Service and the FBI respectively.

What Works Well: Steering clear of conspiracy theories, this is a fascinating recreation of famous events from less famous vantage points. Writer and director Peter Landesman allows the well-known incidents (the shooting itself, the swearing-in of Vice President Johnson, the Kennedy funeral service) to play in the background or in the corners of the screen. He is more interested in the peripheral yet essential stories of what happened at the hospital, the sudden imperative to keep Johnson safe, the frantic search for a lab to process the Zapruder film, the emotional impact on Zapruder himself, the guilt and self-questioning consuming the men entrusted with protecting the President, and the unwanted boulder of infamy landing on Robert Oswald's life. Small details, including grandkids in the first few frames of the Zapruder film, skull fragments in the emergency room, and the unceremonial wedging-in of Kennedy's casket into the plane for the flight back to DC, transform grand history to intimate reality.

What Does Not Work As Well: By definition this is an events-driven narrative without a central role (Zapruder and Robert Oswald come closest) and no singular focus.

Key Quote: 

Dallas Police Detective, to Robert Oswald: If I were you, I'd consider changing my name. I'd pray I never needed the help of the Dallas Police Department or the federal government again. I'd pack your things and your wife and those two children of yours, and I'd move as far from here as I could. I'd never come back, even to die. But that's just me.

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