Hopefully this is not the future of American cinema

Rating: 1/10 (23 April 2017)

I've given this my harshest rating yet. One wonders how something like this abomination gets greenlighted. Although the overall concept of focusing on Jackie in the immediate aftermath of the assassination isn't a poor concept in theory (although one wonders what greater understanding of the public would result, or of what value that would actually be), in practice the film fails to convey much more than to purport a great deal of alternating anger and helplessness (but not grief) by JFK's widow.
It uses a device throughout the film, that of showing Jackie's performance in a televised tour of the White House, juxtaposed with those feelings I have mentioned. The intent may be to show that Jackie was just a phony, a hard bitch that chainsmoked and stomped around ranting when she wasn't alone, walking zombielike around the West Wing (but was not so self-absorbed that she didn't completely ignore her children). If this is indeed the intent, it's an especially mean-spirited way of doing it, as we are given only brief glimpses of a living JFK.
But what makes this a truly awful film is the script and the directing. It's difficult to direct from a bad script, of course, but the protracted use of extreme closeups with an accompanying ominous, repetitious, pounding musical score makes the bad dialogue cringeworthy. The most egregious examples of this occur in the scenes with RFK and the priest. The words written for Bobby are particularly unbelievable and out of character, and both Peter Sarsgaard and Natalie Portman deliver their poorly-written lines with the effort one would expect in a film that just represents a payday for everyone involved.
It's unclear if any of the events and conversations depicted are factual; but I have some real suspicions that the film makers just made this stuff up. It's a soulless film that doesn't get or seem to want any emotional investment from the audience, and once it's over with, you just think, why spend all this time and effort on such a dismal project?