I was really looking forward to this movie after having read Leo Damore's landmark book Senatorial Privilege. Damore's book was landmark because Joe Gargan talked to him directly about the events surrounding that fatal evening. Ed Helms did a great job portraying Gargan in the movie. A surprising and welcome shift away from the usual clownish adult characters he has played in the past. As the "New Frontiersmen" planned the media cover-up at the Kennedy compound in Hyannis; Clancy Brown excelling here in his portrayal of the acerbic Robert McNamara; Gargan was shoved aside as the foolish cousin who got involved early and nearly destroyed Kennedy's career. In truth, this is Gargan's story as he personally and professionally paid the price for Kennedy whom he had pressured to deal immediately with the tragedy and to respectfully 'do the right thing'. Kennedy did not do the right thing. This is evident watching old Joe's dealing with the weak willed Teddie in the wake of events. Bruce Dern couldn't have been any better as the amoral and degenerate Joe Kennedy. So much power with so few spoken words. This insight into the Kennedy compound discussions and an account of the time spent between Teddie and Mary Jo after leaving the cottage and prior to the accident are the two threads that make this such a great movie. Damore did not postulate on what might have happened in either of those locations or time spans in his book. He reported facts and left it to the reader to decide what happened. The known facts were that both Kennedy and Mary Jo had been drinking; a lot. They had left the cottage to supposedly go to the ferry but Mary Jo did not take her purse. Over an hour later, Huck Look had seen the dark sedan on Cemetery Rd backup then speed off down Dyke Rd at an unusually high speed. Huck Look was an unimpeachable witness and recalled most of the license plate. Kennedy took Gargan and Marham back to the scene of the accident, then, giving up the attempted rescue, made it back to Edgartown in the wee hours of the morning. He then did nothing other than fiddle around town (and sober up) before Gargan and Markham showed up in the morning and demanded again that he report the accident. What Kennedy never revealed publicly is what Director John Curran focused on in his movie. First, what happened in that 'lost' hour and a half right before the accident, and secondly, what exactly was said and done in the compound in the weeks immediately following the accident. I believe Curran, Allen, and Logan got it right. I think they understand what was going on inside Kennedy's mind and at the compound. Other noteworthy performances are Olivia Thirlby as Rachel, the thinly veiled stage name for Esther Newberg, and Kate Mara as the unfortunate and pensive Mary Jo. The top performance is that of Jason Clarke. Physically he could be Teddy Kennedy in both looks and spoken accent. But it was in those moments when he was on the phone, or in the bath, or strutting down the streets of Edgartown that made his portrayal so important. You really got a sense of the mental torture that Kennedy was enduring. As a footnote, Damore's life was ruined by publishing his book and he committed suicide a broken man.

A docu-drama that wasn't that compelling. The facts are better covered by many published investigations and documentaries.

I'll be brutally honest on this one: I never heard of this incident or that Ted Kennedy before, so I'll refer to the film objectively, free of any animosity. Chappaquiddick is boring, plain and simple (and the makeup of the main actor is ominous). A 106 minutes story about an incident of a handful of seconds, 106 minutes of my life that I lost forever.

The story of the movie is speculative and does not hold water. When Ted Kennedy drove Kopechne away from the party, the story becomes questionable. Even though Chappaquiddick uses Kennedy's testimonies from the time, it also proves an impossible story to tell 100 percent accurately as certain parts don't quite add up.The strangest aspect of Kopechne's death is the fact that it took Kennedy 10 hours to call the police after driving the car off the bridge. As both the movie and the historical record divulge, a passerby found the car in the morning and called the police. The diver who extracted Kopechne's body said in his testimony that he could have gotten the woman out of the car in 25 minutes following the crash had he been notified, which the movie also shows.Instead of calling the authorities, Ted Kennedy testified that he tried to get Kopechne out of the car himself until he determined that he couldn't and returned to the cottage where the party had been held. There, he got his cousin Joe Gargan (Ed Helms) and Gargan's friend, U.S. Attorney Paul Markham (Jim Gaffigan), who joined the senator in forming a plan. In Kennedy's testimony, he said that he swam back to his hotel - he originally testified that he had been driving himself and Kopechne to the ferry dock to return to their respective hotels in Edgartown on Martha's Vineyard. In the movie, however, Joe and Paul bring Kennedy back to Edgartown on a row boat, where he then changes his suit and calls his father, Joseph P. Kennedy Sr. This is all speculative. The Kennedy team fixing the story is also speculative.Even though Chappaquiddick fills audiences in on the 10 hours between the accident and the next day when Kennedy finally called the police, it still largely remains mysterious why the senator chose not to call first responders immediately. "Gargan and Markham not only failed to get immediate help, but also let the senator swim back alone to report the accident from Edgartown," The movie also speculates that Kopechne could have been alive in the submerged car for a few hours following the crash. But nobody knows the truth of what happened to her. She could have been dead shortly after the accident. Many questions remain with no answers, many speculations with no evidence, and even though Chappaquiddick mostly accurately recounts the events of July 18, 1969 in Massachusetts, the only thing that audiences will walk out of the theater knowing for sure is that the exact events following the car crash will likely never be revealed.