A prominent politician with the last name Kennedy is assassinated in the film The Last Kennedy. However, his name is not John or Robert, it's Franklin. And he's black, and his assassin's name is Walter Lee Fitzgerald, superficially similar to Lee Harvey Oswald. So goes the premise of The Last Kennedy, a potentially interesting but ultimately uneven drama that also calls to mind the first season of 24. Richard Culver and Darla Rothman co-directed, co-wrote, and both star in The Last Kennedy, and it feels like they are trying to cram too many ideas into the film, giving it a distinctly disjointed feel.

The best thing about the film is Rothman's (Taking a Chance on Love, Proof Positive). She plays Linda Fitzgerald, wife of Walter (Culver). The film is primarily Linda telling Walter's story to Franklin's daughter Estelle (Teddi Haynes). The act itself was bizarre given that the Franklins and Fitzgeralds were friends. However, something happened to Walter in the recent past, causing him to act extremely erratic. His condition worsens, and Linda can do nothing about it. She loves her husband, and it devastates her to watch him fall apart before his eyes. Rothman's frustration is real, and she gives a compelling portrait of a feeling of utter uselessness in light of the situation lies at the heart of the film.

The rest of the film is not as good. Everything meanders out in a stream-of-consciousness-like narrative. This works well, and it feels like Linda is trying to sort through her thoughts in a haphazard manner to figure out what happened. Although the viewpoint is primarily Linda's, Rothman and Culver reveal things that she will obviously have no idea of. They do this to shed light on the actual events, so that the audience will not leave frustrated, but it does weaken the focus of The Last Kennedy. The filmmakers try to touch on too many subjects, from the bond between Linda and Estelle, to Walter's paranoia and race relations.

All these ideas muddle the focus of the film, and inflate the running time to nearly two hours. Given the disjointed nature of the narrative, The Last Kennedy almost begins to feel dull. It would have been better for Rothman and Culver to eliminate some of the lesser-explored threads to cut down the time and shift the focus back to Linda. The film is probably twenty minutes too long, and cutting down on the threads would not have done too much harm to the film only because these tangential issues are never fully explored.