As news of the death shocks the nation, the story spirals outward, following, for example, the efforts of officious FBI veteran Forrest Sorrels (Billy Bob Thornton) and his cohorts to wrest Zapruder's film from him and have it developed; the subsequent scramble by Life magazine and other outlets to buy it; Dallas FBI agent James Hosty's (Ron Livingston) agonized realization that he had been in contact with Lee Harvey Oswald (Jeremy Strong) but had not learned enough about his aims to stop him; and the confused scene at the Dallas jail where Oswald is held until he too is assassinated. (The film does not question that Oswald was the sole killer of JFK or that he also shot Officer J.D. Tippett, although, rather curiously, it does not show him committing either crime.)

Later episodes in the four-day chronicle include the hasty efforts to get JFK's coffin on board Air Force One and the swearing in of JFK's heavily guarded successor, Lyndon Johnson, as Jackie and Kennedy's chief aides look on mournfully. Though the airplane's departure means that some of tale's main characters move on to Washington, DC, the film remains planted in Texas. As TV reports show JFK being interred in Arlington National Cemetery, Oswald is hastily buried in a rural graveyard by his family and a crowd so sparse that reporters are enlisted to serve as pallbearers.

For viewers who know a fair amount about the JFK assassination, the latter episode points to one of "Parkland"'s few points of real interest. Relatively little attention has been devoted to Oswald's brother Robert (James Badge Dale), who never doubted that his sibling killed Kennedy even as their mother Marguerite (Jacki Weaver) steadfastly maintained that the government framed Lee. The scenes involving the Oswald family have a freshness that other parts of this oft-told tale lack.

Landesman and cinematographer Barry Ackroyd shoot the action verité-style, with a lot of rushed camera movements and the kind of reliance on telephoto close-ups that perhaps will be very satisfying on an iPhone but can induce headaches for anyone who sits too close in a theater.

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