Parkland

2013 piece of shit

Rating: 5/20 (Jen: didn't make it)

Plot: Dallas, November 22, 1963--Kennedy's shot by Oswald and Oswald alone. This is the dramatic retelling of what happened after that with Abraham Zapruder who shot perhaps the most famous home video footage ever shot, Oswald's family members, the doctors and nurses at the titular hospital where both Kennedy and Oswald [Spoiler alert!] died, and the entire nation.

I don't know. It still seems a little too early for a movie poking fun at the Kennedy assassination. It's still something that's fresh on a lot of people's minds and a tragic time in American history, one of those sacred cows that might never feel appropriate as parody fodder. As people sometimes say, it's just too soon.

Wait a second. Say that again. This isn't supposed to be a parody? This was an honest effort by writer/director Peter Landesman to make a serious film about the Kennedy assassination? You're kidding me. Seriously? But Zac Efron stars in the thing. And he plays a doctor. Let me consult Wikipedia. Nope, you're right. It's a dramatic thriller and a serious attempt to tell the story of what happened after Kennedy was assassinated. Well, that's about the most unfortunate thing I've ever heard.

I went into this expecting a hidden gem. I didn't hear anything about it last year, and as a guy who's had an interest in the assassination and the various characters involved, I expected this to be pretty good. I mean, it has Billy Bob Thornton and Paul Giamatti in it. They wouldn't be in a bad movie about the Kennedy assassination, would they? Why, yes, they would. In fact, Paul Giamatti is at the center of a scene which might define this experience for me. The J.F.K. assassination isn't shown, at least not while it's happening. You do get to see the Zapruder film, the popular snuff film that it is, a few times. But at the moment when the murder takes place, we just watch Zapruder's face as he's capturing it all on film. And that's kind of a cool move actually, probably the only cool move in the entire movie. Unfortunately, Giamatti starts saying, "Oh, my God! Oh, my God!" like somebody making fun of Paul Giamatti would if they had gone camping with Paul Giamatti and seen him overreacting to seeing a spider. And I started laughing. That's right--it was a genuine laugh-out-loud moment which is one more laugh than R.I.P.D. and Ghostbuster 2, the two comedy films that I watched around Parkland, got, and it came precisely at the moment that nobody should even think about laughing. It's possible this is more of a reflection on my character than on anything that Landesman or Giamatti were doing. The rest of this 93 minute fiasco? Landesman's fault! The awkward face close-ups;  the awkward writing and attempts to stuff this artificial emotion into the proceedings (the guy who tells Zapruder, "Looks like a good life"? Come on, people!); numerous shots of Jacqueline Kennedy, each one feeling tackier than the last; faux-dramatic shots, shaky cam overuse, and poor editing that really should have made this a direct-to-video release. And by "video," I actually mean that this should have only been released in 8MM format that needs to be shown with a projector like the one used to show Zapruder's film in this movie. Direct-to-8MM then. I really had trouble, when Zac Efron was running around with his scruffy face and insisting that they leave Kennedy's pants on, figuring out if Landesman was trying to make an episode of ER or a parody, but it really looked like something an elementary school could have put together if you gave the kiddos enough money. Efron's appearance in this makes as much sense as the "magic bullet" theory, and Billy Bob Thornton, who is probably perfectly cast, is terrible as Forrest Sorrels. "We need stretchers!" And his freak-out when watching the Zapruder film and yelling at another guy for saying something I didn't hear because I was bored and my head was going back and to the left, back and to the left, back and to the left as I struggled to stay awake? Well, it's not one of Billy Bob's finer moments. The worst performance might be Rory Cochrane as Earl the medical examiner. I think I like the idea of giving us a glimpse at what the Oswald family went through in the days following the assassination, but somebody in that family needs to sue the makers of this for slandering their good family name. First, they say that Lee Harvey Oswald is some kind of murderer. Even worse, they turn him into a cliche. There's a scene where he's talking to his brother in prison and they do that touching-hands-on-the-glass thing that you see in way too many movies. I'm sure that's happened before, but I don't think it happens with the frequency that it happens in movies, and I can almost guarantee nobody did that in 1963. And Oswald's mother? What the fuck is going on there? Jacki Weaver's crazy eyes are brought in to make Oswald's mommy seem like the Queen of Crazy Town, sort of a cross between Rosanne Barr and an electrified orangutan. It's daffy, another performance that could convince a person that this is not a serious production at all.

Parkland really could have been something in the hands of other people. Take a scene where they are trying to find tools to remove seats from the plane because "we're not putting him below like a piece of luggage!" Those are little details that an assassination buff might find interesting and want to see in a movie. In the hands of this first-time director, however, it's a mess, a scene with silly suspense (Will they find the tools in time!?) and weird sound that is so obviously not coming from anybody or anything in the scene. Even at that stage in the movie, I kept expecting a black comedy routine where they drop the casket and Kennedy's body rolls out. The funny thing is that a scene like that actually would have improved the movie.

This is a movie that puts the "ass" in assassination and is by far the worst thing to ever happen to a member of the Kennedy family. A total embarrassment and failure, this is an attempt to take human tragedy, one of the darkest moments in recent American history, and turn it into something artistic while completely missing anything resembling actual human emotion or anything even halfway interesting. Gory, exploitative, and tacky, this movie is just wrong on so many levels that it almost makes you start formulating your own conspiracy theory. During one scene, a character says, "What a shitty place to die." Well, this is a shitty movie to die in, and Kennedy, and really all of America, deserves a lot better.