It should not be difficult to make a fascinating film about the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Unfortunately, Parkland chooses to examine that fateful day from over 10 different perspectives and ends up seeing nothing clearly. Writer-director Peter Landesman focuses, in particular, on a young doctor who found the President on his trauma table (Zac Efron); the brother (James Badge Dake) of Lee Harvey Oswald (Jeremy Strong); and Abraham Zapruder (Paul Giamatti), who unwittingly caught the killing on tape and instantly became the most famous amateur filmmaker of the age.
A fluttering camera evokes the chaos, confusion and disconnect of the assassination. There are brief, beautiful moments illustrating the reverence JFK inspired: Efron telling the nurses to leave the President’s boxers on, Zapruder arguing that showing the actual death footage would be “undignified”. These contrast with the stark reality of JFK’s mortality, demonstrated in one quietly unnerving scene where a nurse is handed a piece of his skull and some brain matter.
However, these snippets fail to speak to the significance of the events. Given too little time, each character is reduced to a snapshot. There is no sense of historical sweep. What you are left with is a story you’ve literally heard a thousand times