Watch Parkland For Free

I love this movie so much

Sick Product of a Sick System

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

Parkland was the name of the hospital that President Kennedy was taken to after being shot in Dallas and Peter Landesman's film deals with the events of that day and the days that followed. It's a somewhat better film than the critics gave it credit for though it doesn't add anything to either the truth or the legend and prefers instead to concentrate on how the assassination affected the people on the ground, the hospital staff, the secret service agents, the Oswald family etc.It's well cast and well played by some very talented players, (Marcia Gay Harden as a nurse, Billy Bob Thornton, Ron Livingston and David Harbour as secret service men, Paul Giametti as Abraham Zapruder, Jackie Weaver and James Badge Dale as Oswald's mother and brother; even Zac Efron as a young doctor who fails to save Kennedy's life is excellent). Landesman shoots it in a semi-documentary style which is fine though perhaps the editing is a little on the busy side; he doesn't seem to like to hold a frame for more than a few seconds at a time. I don't know, of course, how close any of this is to the facts but presumably the film was researched to within a few inches of its life and no matter how often this story has been told on screen it continues to be very moving.

The acting was pretty good - as much as any one actor had a chance to do so. But I am amazed that not one review points out how incredibly one-sided this movie is. The clearest evidence that Oswald could not have been the lone-shooter as claimed was the Zapruder film, which is an important part of this movie. But it is never shown in the movie. Also, that Oswald was already publicly announced as Kennedy's assassin within one hour of the shooting was, and still is, outrageous. Yet how anyone came to this conclusion is not even touched upon in the film. Not one single scene from the search at the TSBD, nothing until Oswald was already in custody. And how and who decided to remove the body from the hospital before an autopsy is not even touched upon, just the short heated exchange between the coroner and the Secret Service. If the film simply showed what happened in the hospital, that would be one aspect of the story. But here many other aspects are shown, and an incredible amount of detail remains not shown or even touched upon. The film has some interesting aspects, a side not shown before. But the story telling is just plain poor, leaving too many questions unanswered. They showed Oswald being shot, but nothing about what happened after, except the ER scene. OK, but then why all the stuff about the FBI and the burning of the file? Again, very selective in what is shown and not shown. I give the film 5/10 because I like the style of it and the acting. But the story itself is really poorly portrayed.

I fear films like this, because I know if anyone ever makes one well enough, I might end up hating American cinema forever. Thankfully, I found this film to be executed poorly enough that I can breathe a sigh of relief."Parkland" is a super-somber, ponderous marathon of long silences between sparse dialog delivered with exaggerated whisper. Abrupt and remarkably volatile tantrums also occur, but can all but be counted with the fingers on one hand.In such ultra-slow motion, out comes a one-dimensional bore of a narrative that never pleads with conspiracy theorists to give up their presumably errant beliefs, but pretends no controversy ever existed in the first place. Perhaps the dubious design is to wear the theorists down until saliva drips from their gaping mouths.Otherwise superb actors (Thornton, Giamatti, Harden, and Efron) are lost among a generally weak cast. James Newton Howard adds a snail's-pace music soundtrack resembling a weeping choir that makes Brian Eno's "Music For Airports" sound like a frenetic, dizzying étude.But that's not the point. Those of us who have actually read Vincent Bugliosi's 1700-page tome know that the main purpose here is to debunk conspiracy theories (it is titled "Reclaiming History," after all). Unfortunately, even admiring Bugliosi's skills as a prosecutor and zealous advocate do not overcome the painful reality that he makes a horrifically misguided claim to also being an historian. He is no such thing.Those who know the conspiracy-friendly film "Kill the Messenger" also might be shocked to learn that its same screenwriter and producer also wrote and directed "Parkland." Other familiar names, including actors Tom Hanks and Bill Paxton, flesh out a rather lengthy list of producers.We have all seen the Zapruder film, which includes depiction of a large piece of JFK's scalp being torn almost completely off (footage even included in this film), so why during the opening do we see a completely intact head as JFK's body is being rolled into Parkland Memorial Hospital on a stretcher? Why so much effort to portray Agent Hosty's acts as merely a cover-up of ineptitude without even the hint of the controversy that raged in the newspapers that Oswald was supposed to have been an FBI informant and even kept Hosty's name in his address book? The only hint that Oswald might have been a trained agent provocateur (explaining his defection to the USSR and public displays of over-the-top Marxism) come from his mother, who is portrayed as a sociopath, with grief uncharacteristically emerging only at the end during her son's funeral. If only Robert Oswald had a crystal ball when scolding his brother for being such a bad father—in real life, the older daughter, Rachel Oswald Porter, graduated as the valedictorian of the University of Texas.Follow this moping maze of darkness if you must, but just for fun, read Mark Antony's famous soliloquy when it's all finished. This is not the last word.

I was not alive when the assassination of President Kennedy happened and unfortunately as a Brit I didn't know that much about the story either. I wasn't completely naïve I knew that he had been shot whilst in a car parading down a street and that Jackie was wearing that infamous pink suit, but apart from that I went into the movie quite unaware of the events that were going to unfold in front of me.At first I would just like to say that I was amazed by Zac Efron's performance in this and he undeniably proved that he's not just a pretty face made for singing and dancing on the Disney channel, he grabbed the viewer's attention and you felt as though you were right there with him.The nature of the filming and respect for the Kennedy family definitely shone through for me in that they used the original footage from his murder as opposed to recreating it Quentin Tarantino style, which others may have gone for and when using the actor portraying him it was rare or brief that you ever saw his face properly.The part that really sold the film for me was that it showed the great deal of respect and admiration people really had for this man. They did this by presenting us with fairly ordinary people becoming involved in something historically tragic in the space of a few minutes and showing the profound effect it had on them in the days that followed.The side of the Robert Oswald was incredibly well portrayed by it's actor; the desperation to understand his brother's actions and motives were portrayed with a simple look or sigh from him and you couldn't help but feel sorry for someone who has done nothing wrong, but because of sharing a family name he is ridiculed and blamed by people who were understandably so angered by his brother Lee Harvey Oswald.Now for the real crux of the matter, Jackie Kennedy. All people who have heard of her will undoubtedly know her as one of the strongest females in American history and the dedication of her role shone through, the actress who played her was not dismissive of the fact that her role was so incredibly influential and iconic. She showed Mrs Kennedy with a side we all knew must have been there, but was never really exposed to the world outside of Parkland, as a woman who appeared to keep her poise throughout the happenings of that devastating time. It was refreshing and saddening to see this woman terrified and heart broken at the loss of her husband.Overall I think this movie is undeniably worth a watch and will inevitably pull on your heart strings, it is brilliant for anyone who is not particularly knowledgeable about the events that happened that day and gives us a completely different insight to what people would not have necessarily known about it at the time. It was done respectfully and honestly. It is a film about the mourning of a icon and while that happens fairly early on in the film the poignancy of the grief surrounding his death is never once lost.