Bobby (2006)

To me, this movie is perfection.

Pretty Good

Don't Believe the Hype

Absolutely Fantastic

An interesting idea for a movie that despite a powerful finale, just has far too much to say.The film is set on the day Robert Kennedy was killed at the Ambassador hotel in Los Angeles. However, it isn't really a detailed look at the assassination, and doesn't go anywhere near a conspiracy theory – the film heads in a different direction entirely.Intercut with real footage of Bobby Kennedy, the film goes behind the scenes on the fateful day and focuses on the staff and guests at the hotel. The reason many of these characters were chosen becomes obvious at the end. These include an ex-doorman, the manager, the guys in the kitchen, the girls on the hotel's switchboard and various guests. The script attempts to give back-story to each of the characters, but in doing so the movie never really shuts up. Everybody prattles on giving chunks of exposition or information to make their characters sound real. The script for this thing must have been massive; it probably needed to be wheeled around in a shopping trolley.Unfortunately, despite the verbiage, much of what takes place is superficial and actorish. The film seems inspired by Robert Altman's "Shortcuts" and "Nashville" where a number of vignettes come together at the end. However, for the most part, "Bobby" lacks the sting, and most importantly, the restraint of Altman's films.And restraint is the key here because writer/director Emilio Estevez shows very little. It seems as though every opinion he ever had is espoused by at least one of the characters – often with an anthem swelling on the soundtrack. These cover topics amongst others such as the sanctity of marriage, the aging process and race relations. Maybe this all looked very important to the actors who may have been impressed by the set piece speeches that have the gravitas of Shakespearean soliloquies.Some of the vignettes are overwritten and tedious. The two young campaign volunteers who meet up with the hippie drug dealer and get high are the most irritating, but are closely followed by the female Czech reporter. Not many of the actors come across as completely natural. However Lindsay Lohan does; she gives a believable and touching performance.Many of the sentiments the characters express are almost as lofty as Bobby Kennedy's impassioned speeches, but where his were full of conviction and caught the temper of the times, much of what the characters have to say is cloying and forced.But the ending works. Set in the kitchen of the hotel, it is superbly staged and is a clever blend of real footage and recreation. It brings home the horror of Robert Kennedy's death and also reminds us that a number of others were hit in the fusillade of shots.The finale goes some way towards making up for earlier shortcomings, but not entirely. It would be a hard movie to contemplate sitting through again – and that for me is the test of a good movie.

In this production the director attempts to return us to the mood of the late 60s - an era where too many of us believed the improbable was the likely and the customary was the enemy. Estevez employs the technique of "look(ing) at things the way they {were}, and ask why" ... then dream of what never was but try to make it true on camera.The film is filled with fictional accounts of the invented lives of guests and employees at The Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles - "people com(ing), people go(ing), nothing ever happening" until the final moments of the film. Yet in this paean, the title character is treated so reverentially the role of Bobby remains uncast. Instead, Estevez uses news clips to establish mise-en-scène. Unlike the film's never identified shooter, the director misses.The film's only contrast is that it omits important historical facts in preference for the superfluous. Despite the film's buildup of election year hope in the fictional characters, we are not shown the Palestinian Sirhan Sirhan's motive of despair or Bobby Kennedy's firm support of Israel during the Six-Day War and beyond. Despite the unacknowledged troop buildup in Vietnam by John Kennedy, the film hovers on Bobby's desire to remove those troops quickly. Despite the hope in RFK presented through the eyes of a young black "everyman" campaign worker, the film neglects to tell us that, while Attorney General, Bobby Kennedy issued a directive authorizing the FBI to wiretap Martin Luther King and other leaders of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Instead of these historical relevancies we are treated to a view of how two of Kennedy's campaign workers would have looked if they had tried to play tennis while wearing business suits after dropping acid - more fiction.As Bobby in life, the film "Bobby" is full of hope but leaves us well short of its goal. Only one Bobby is blameless for this. 2 stars.

Writer-director-co-star Emilio Estevez takes a tragic, emotional event in American history--the June 5th, 1968 assassination of Senator Robert Kennedy by Sirhan Sirhan--and attempts to build a kaleidoscope of stories around it, giving personalities to the faces in the crowd that fateful night at Los Angeles' Ambassador Hotel. Curiously, Estevez chose not to focus on Kennedy (who is represented by newsreel footage), nor on Sirhan Sirhan, but on fictional (or fictionalized) characters such as a young couple marrying to keep the husband out of Vietnam; two young campaign workers who drop acid and spend the entire day goofing off; a Hispanic busboy at the hotel, fighting for equality and hoping to get the night off to see the Dodgers play; a beautician whose husband is cheating on her; and so on. With such a horrible tragedy looming over the third act of the picture, it's rather difficult to care about what color shoes Helen Hunt wears, or whether Lindsay Lohan's parents will turn up at her ceremony. Estevez has his heart in the right place (and his visual eye is impressive), but the screenplay is shallow and turgid, laughably underlined with a kind of political correctness which is supposed to make the picture seem relevant but is instead anachronistic. Star-studded cast generally fails to make an impression, though again this is the fault of the writing. ** from ****

Emilio Estevez is properly the lesser known member of Sheen family, even though he starred in The Breakfast Club and the Mighty Ducks. However whilst a talented actor he is also a writer and director and with Bobby he assembled an assemble cast including Anthony Hopkins, William H. Macy, Martin Sheen, Elijah Wood, Shia LaBeouf, Christian Slater, Lindsay Lohan, Sharon Stone et al.Bobby is set on the day of the California Primacy in 1968, with Senator Robert Kennedy on the edge of being elected to be the Democratic Presidential Candidate. America is going through a period of social upheaval: the country is in an unpopular war in Vietnam, the civil rights movement is in full swing and drugs culture is growing. At the Ambassador Hotel in Los Andreas Estevez explores these issues of the 60s in a microcosmic of the world. There is a young couple played by Wood and Lohan who are marrying so that he can avoid being sent to Vietnam, a Latino busboy Jose (Freddy Rodriguez) who is an example of America's growing immigrant population, the Hotel Manager played by Macy who sees himself as a great liberal supporter of RFK but his attitude towards women is not so enlightened, the kitchen manager (Slater) who has racist attitudes towards Mexicans and two campaign workers (LaBeouf and Brian Geraghty) skipping knocking on doors to take some powerful LSD.Estevez makes a bold film about the 60s, and does a good job judging all the themes and characters in the film. He has a keen eye for direction, getting the look of the 60s about right, with good cinematography and fine camera movements. There is a good soundtrack of 60s songs and he does try and be ambitious playing the song Initials (from Hair) when the campaign workers are stoned and see imagines of Vietnam. This is a film about the 60s, a period of turmoil and even though there are political issues like racisms this is film is more a social piece then a political film. There are some parallels to more contemporary issues like American treatment of Latino immigrants and how there are discriminated against, particularly because of the recent laws passed in Arizona whilst doing the jobs no one else wants, African American still live in in-povertised areas and also discriminated against and America involved in a popular war. Kennedy offers hope but Estevez only shows him in achieve footage or out of focus: he was not a main player in the film.There is a great cast and good acting throughout. But a problem with the film is that there are so many characters that not all of theme are developed and not many of them are well developed. There were characters that could have been easily cut, like Sheen and Helen Hunt's characters who add nothing to the film and should have cut (and the two did their best and I like Sheen as an actor). The same can be said about Anthony Hopkins who was a real weak link in the film. Estevez needed to streamline his acting and directing.Overall an ambitious film that is underrated.