Parkland is an American historical drama film that recounts the chaotic events that occurred following John F. Kennedy's assassination in Dallas, Texas on November 22, 1963.
Written and directed by Peter Landesman and starring Zac Efron, Marcia Gay Harden and Billy Bob Thornton, Parkland is the ferocious, heart-stopping and powerful true story, never told, of the people behind the scenes of one of the most scrutinized events in history.
- Nominated for Best Film, London Film Festival
Parkland Review
By The Guardian, UK
"..Parkland, which competes for the Golden Lion at the Venice film festival, is a stolid yet involving account of the chaotic aftermath of the Kennedy slaying, a film that takes the Warren commission as read and focuses instead on the immediate ripples. Debut director Peter Landesman sets his stall right away by showing the crucial moment of impact only insofar as it registers on the face of nearby Abraham Zapruder (Paul Giamatti), the hapless director of the world's most notorious home movie. That's because Landesman's interest is not so much in anguished Jackie Kennedy or loitering Lyndon Johnson as it is in the medics and the bodyguards, the bystanders and bit-players. Parkland gives us a neat Texas spin on Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. And if 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.
In the immediate wake of the shooting, Parkland marshalls its ensemble cast with efficiency. Billy Bob Thornton plays the grizzled secret service agent who boasts that he has never lost his man, while Jackie Weaver portrays Oswald's mother as a deluded harpy who sees her son as a hero. More alarming even than Weaver, though, is the sight of boyish Zac Efron playing the panicked doctor who's brought in to treat Kennedy (“It's just you,” the nurse helpfully informs him). One look at Efron's vapid smile and we know, as sure as night follows day, that the president's doomed. If there is a tragic hero among this unhappy bunch, it may well be found in the unlikely form of Robert Oswald (James Badge Dale), the brother of Lee. Robert is smart and dignified; a cool head in the crisis; a moral compass for the film. But when the public want a scapegoat, it seems that he might fit the bill.
Parkland is a smart little tale from the sidelines of history, shot in the de-rigueur docu-realist manner and spiriting us from the blood-soaked operating theatre to the interior of Air Force One, where the seats must be unscrewed to make room for the coffin."