Point Blank (John Boorman, 1967); 11.22.63 (Hulu, 2016); Parkland (Peter Landesman, 2013)

SPOILERS

Point Blank is the quintessential JFK-assassination-hangover film. During a robbery on Alcatraz of a crime/business syndicate known as The Organization, Walker (Lee Marvin) is ambushed and left for dead by his heist partner Reese (John Vernon). Upon regaining consciousness, he spends the rest of the film trying to recover $93,000, his half of the heist, with a doggedness worthy of Jim Garrison (he utters "$93,000" so often that it takes on the contours of a conspiracy theorist's mantra - "magic bullet" or "grassy knoll"). That requires him to navigate The Organization's hall of mirrors and Boorman, along with Phillip H. Lathrop's dazed cinematography, dumbfounds with his portrait of an unknowable, rhizomatic ecosystem - penthouses across from penthouses, rooms within rooms within rooms, mirrors that are doors, heel clicks and soul screams (courtesy of Stu Gardner) and intercom announcements that disorient with their ability to transgress space, characters who intone robotic business speak, and, of course, snipers in disparate locales. Walker himself is a cipher. He has no known first name. But that's okay - in a mildly feminist twist, his paramour Chris (Angie Dickinson) has no known last name. And as a measure of his extreme indifference to anything unrelated to his $93,000, he thanks the gay men (Ron Walters and George Strattan) he holds hostage as a ruse to divert the attention of the phalanx of suits guarding Reese.

Walker runs through several important functionaries in this Organization with no success. If he could just find the top man who "runs things," then he can retrieve his money. But no discernible hierarchy exists; once Walker thinks he's found the highest executive, there's always someone higher and more mysterious. Nowhere is this baffling reality more redolent than in the scene in which Walker confronts Brewster (Carroll O'Connor). Nope, he's not the top man either and he's almost petulant about all the trouble Walker has caused: "You threaten a financial structure like this for $93,000?" As an officer in The Organization, he explains corporations to Walker. They deal in millions but never in cash; Brewster himself has only $11 in his pocket. But both remain as obstinate as toddlers. Even though he feels it's pointless, Brewster takes him to see Fairfax (Keenan Wynn) who shoots Brewster dead and assures Walker that Brewster "was the last one." Finally, Walker has found the top man. But wait - isn't this Yost, the man he partnered with in the beginning of the film to find Reese and his $93,000? Then who he is really? Walker doesn't know and recedes into the shadows like a sniper. Yost/Fairfax drops off the money and leaves. But Walker doesn't retrieve it; he doesn't even emerge from the shadows. The film ends with a long shot of Alcatraz and Boorman strands us with one of cinema's most searing portrayals of the indifference of capital and all its byzantine organizations. 

Based on a typically bloated Stephen King novel, 11.22.63 has an intriguing premise. Jake Epping (James Franco) must travel back to 1960 and gear up to prevent the assassination of JFK. But King's 849-page novel means that it must be translated into a eight-episode miniseries with far too many time-wasting diversions and preposterous coincidences. Fascinating when it sticks to the assassination plot. But someone get this man an editor!

Parkland falls somewhere in between. Based on Vincent Bugliosi's Four Days in November: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, it runs a tight 93 minutes even though Bugliosi's book is over 1,600 pages long! With an attractive cast including Zac Efron as Dr. Charles James "Jim" Carrico, Jeremy Strong as Lee Harvey Oswald (perfect training for Kendall Roy in Succession), and Jimmie Dale Gilmore as Reverend Saunders, Parkland comes off as a little more than a Wiki page. But as a minute-to-minute recreation of 11/22/63, its merciful briskness lends it a great deal more utility than the average Oscar prestige pic.

Point Blank: A+

11.22.63: B-minus

Parkland: B+