Simply Perfect

Let's be realistic.

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

Are we any closer to the truth? Has Walter Cronkite suddenly appeared on channel 4 to tell us that it was all just a close call? Did Lee Oswald have his day in court?We are all damaged goods in the aftermath. Poor Zapruder: the horror in his face as played by Giamatti, he'd never feel pleasure in running his 8mm camera to catch his grandchildren playing. Secret Service agent Sorrells reminding all that they dropped the ball, the sense of shame he must have felt. Hosty, realizing he could have stopped it all if he had only... just ... followed through.This isn't a time travel story showing how the past can't be changed, or an explanation of how his head travelled "back, and to the left..." Nor is it a parody, with a spit ball travelling "back, and to the left..." or a National Lampoon of the first ten thousand days of JFK.This is as close to a documentary as could be giving us a horrible taste in our mouths how events can turn cruel, how they can be relentless and how we, those of us who were alive in those days, can be drawn back into it and the fog of remembrance is ripped away, renewed with little details.

To begin with, I am so positive that I wrote and submitted a review right after I watched this film but now I cannot find it here. Has anyone else ever had this problem? Moving on...I never got a chance to see this film in the theater, it came and went so fast. I had to watch it on blu ray and I must say it is a very well constructed film, it really has the feel of transporting you to 1963 while watching it which is a feat that not every film can accomplish. The attention to detail is very accurate, in MOST cases but there are some glaring factual mistakes, some that can be written off as a money saving problem considering it was not a high budgeted film but there some that there is no excuse for. These MAY be considered SPOILER ALERTS if any viewer has no idea about common history. 1. There is no tent over Oswald's grave. 2. The coffin was not correct, there were no pre-made letters that were attached to the top of the coffin lid but since there was no Close-up shown I can dismiss this as a cost saving device by the production. 3. When Zapruder is filming the assassination, he is in the correct spot but he is alone on the pedestal when in fact his secretary was standing behind him and holding him steady. This is a bonehead 101 mistake that there is NO excuse for. If the director, who also wrote the script, made this amateur blunder then I would have hoped that Paul Giamatti being a consummate actor and researched his role thoroughly (I can only assume here) would have pointed this out during filming. This is not a detail of conjecture, it can be justified by photos and both of their own testimonies. No excuse for this one. 4. This one is more of a murky detail depending on how you sway but when the body of JFK is being wheeled into Parkland, the top and side of his head can clearly be seen to be "fully intact" instead of blown out with brain matter falling out as "some" autopsy photos show. I can see how the Producers wanted to keep the "gruesome" aspect out of a theatrical release for a more General rating BUT I would have thought that the director would have wanted to be more historically correct with the eventual video release and shoot 2 versions of this scene. But, having listened to the director commentary track he seems pretty "in control" of the production so the blame should be laid at his feet. 5. This can be put into the "latter stage of time table of events". I am not sure if Kennedy's underpants were left on while in Parkland, this could be accurate, but once his body arrived at Bethesda Naval Hospital he was nude and inside a slate gray body bag as witnessed by one of the attendants who handled the body for that "autopsy". When you do a film with as much important historical context as this subject, you set yourself up when you get the "nit-pick" details wrong. It is just the way it is.

A relatively straight-forward telling of a historical event with lots of blood and gore. John F. Kennedy apparently had so much blood in his body that even after so much of it must have spilled in the limousine, there was still enough left over to completely soak every doctor's shirt and cover every person's hands within a 20-foot radius of the ER. Yes, this director, Peter Landesman, sure does like gore. And yet, he was strangely demure about showing the moment of JFK's assassination (all of that was accomplished through reaction shots).The plus of this movie is its highlighting of details that folks might never consider, like when the Dallas medical examiner wouldn't allow JFK's body to leave the hospital because he was a murder victim, or that L. H. Oswald's mother thought her son was an agent of the US government.These "real life" details occasionally got a bit dubious though, I thought, like when one secret service agent took out a hack-saw and cut away a section of Airforce One's fuselage to allow JFK's coffin in. Really? Is an airplane so easily cut? If so, would it still be safe to fly in? Oh well, Hollywood, right? Or, maybe this really happened. That's the problem with biopics, it's hard to tell where reality leaves off and convenient creativity begins.All in all, Parkland was a well-made period piece where little details take center stage. Mildly recommended.p.s. Hello again Jackie Earle Haley. Kelly from the Bad News Bears is in everything these days! Good for you, man.

Parkland shows how was the life of some people who were involved in the death of President John F. Kennedy. From the chaos, disbelief and horror at Parkland hospital that received President Kennedy (along with the disorder in the sad trip back to Washington with Kennedy's coffin), the suffering of who had the sad 'privilege' of filming great detail the murder, as the family of Lee Harvey Oswald took the stain to be related to the person murderer Kennedy. No shows ridiculous conspiracy theories, and focuses on the great historical or political moments, but shows us how, on any given day, these people took this unexpected horror. Not for nothing the best movie in the world, but it is certainly interesting to see this view of such an important and sad day in history.