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80Engrossing, quietly revelatory, and often profoundly moving as it retells a story we only thought we knew.
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75The chief virtues of Parkland are journalistic in the best sense.
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75It does assemble a compelling collage from the experiences of several real-life witnesses to the event and its aftermath.
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75A sobering, documentary-style film commemorating eyewitness accounts of what happened in the aftermath of the tragedy, some of them fresh as a new wound, all of them painful but vital to a deeper understanding of one of the darkest chapters in American history.
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75Parkland is a fascinating insider’s view of those fateful two days in November of 1963, when a president was murdered, his assassin was gunned down in custody and generations of conspiracies were born.
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70The writer-director digs deeply and with a marked sensitivity, capturing the desperate, heartbroken humanity of the time and the place. But it is also a movie of frustrating stumbles — blunders that diminish what might have been a brilliant film.
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67Parkland adds no significant knowledge to history or conspiracy theorists, but such details as the way Zapruder’s scrunched-up eye pops wide open when he witnesses what will be forever imprinted on his retina and amateur film are vivid.
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63A film of modest ambition and workmanlike pacing, it breaks little new ground, either in form or content. Then again, that may be the point.
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63All of this is secondary, even tertiary material, even if much of it is interesting and even wrenching to behold.
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63The events of those days would have been better covered in greater depth in a miniseries, rather than a 90-minute movie.
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63It shouldn’t necessarily be the case that a film focusing on the collateral details of the shooting, after the fact, would feel dull and uninvolving, but this writing/directing debut by journalist Peter Landesman does, with the exception of a few particularly interesting revelations.
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63Bulging with period details and a large and busy cast, Parkland is well made and at times queasily fascinating. At others, it gives in to melodrama and the ticking off of facts.
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63Parkland is wildly uneven, although compulsively watchable.
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62Parkland mines some interesting scenes, if not in an entirely coherent fashion, resolving as more of an interesting concept than a fully rendered and effective film.
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60The acting is first rate, the story still heartbreakingly urgent. But ultimately Parkland plays more like a re-enactment than a film in its own right.
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60Perhaps it’s inevitable that the movie works best not while we’re watching fictional recreations, but when we see real footage or hear actual broadcasts.
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60Parkland finds a new angle on an exhaustively chronicled and debated subject by focussing on the grim practicalities of the situation.
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60If the film finally doesn't tell us anything we did not already know, the approach makes a worn-out old tragedy feel supple and urgent.
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58As vicarious, you-are-there re-creations of historical events go, it’s creditably workmanlike; whether that’s the best use of the dream factory is another matter.
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50The most grievous sins here are sins of omission.
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Oct 4, 201350Parkland expends lots of energy and expertise on re-creating these infamous events, yet it is so lacking in narrative purpose that many viewers are likely to leave muttering, "Okay…but so what?"
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50Because the film, which affects the style of “United 93,” offers no new insights, theories or important information, you’re left wondering why it was made.
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50Those looking for some human interest in their human interest may be equally frustrated.
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50The Peter Landesman film's overt politics are minimal, aside from defaulting to the myth of John F. Kennedy as a martyr for...something.
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45Awkward, incoherent and plodding.
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40And so, as the solemnity of the enterprise is frittered away, you feel moved to ask: what is this film for?
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40It's in the film's second half that Parkland goes all Tony Romo and fumbles. Instead of becoming truly engrossing, it threatens to descend into unreserved melodrama.
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40The tone never stops waffling, and nothing truly revelatory ever emerges about those terrible few days in Texas. What we’re left with is the Disney theme-park version of history — all waxworks and weepiness.
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38Sadly, what Parkland becomes is a crying shame.
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30Granted, Landesman feels an obligation to history, but there’s something ponderously obvious about the way so many of these scenes are played.
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20Oswald’s brother Robert, played by James Badge Dale, is the film’s only rational human being, and Dale makes you wish Landesman had written the entire film from his angle.
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16There's a pleasing egalitarianism to the film's history-through-the-eyes-of-the-ordinary-man concept, but the script rarely makes the case that their versions are compelling enough to warrant a film.
User score distribution:
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Positive: 2 out of 3
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Mixed: 0 out of 3
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Negative: 1 out of 3
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Oct 9, 20138
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Oct 15, 20131
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Oct 13, 20137