Reviewed by Stuart O'Connor
Featuring Bobby Kennedy (archive footage), Sirhan Sirhan (archive footage), Bradley Ayers, Munir Sirhan, Frank Burns, Haynes Johnson, Luke Putres, Ruben Carbajal, Evan Freed, Herbert Spiegel, Lawrence Teeter, Robert Walton
Certification UK 12A
Runtime 102 minutes
Written & directed by Shane O'Sullivan
Another Kennedy assasination conspiracy film, but this time the subject is Bobby, not older brother John. And fortunately, Oliver Stone is nowhere in sight.
On June 5, 1968, Robert Kennedy won the California Democratic Primary and was ready to challenge Republican Richard Nixon for the US presidency. After his victory speech in a ballroom at the Ambassador Hotel in LA, he left through a crowded pantry. Suddenly a 24-year-old Palestinian named Sirhan Sirhan stepped forward and began firing.
Sirhan was convicted of the killing, and is in prison still (his dozen or so applications for parole have all been denied). And the official line has always been that Sirhan acted alone. But BBC investigative reporter O'Sullivan's thoroughly researched documentary raises plenty of questions. Witnesses claim that Sirhan was several feet in front of Kennedy, yet the fatal shot to his head came from one inch behind his ear. And even under hypnosis, Sirhan has never been able to remember the shooting. Leading psychiatrists say that he was a "Manchurian Candidate", programmed to kill Kennedy or act as a decoy for the real kiler. There's also the question of additional bullet holes found at the scene, a mysterious "girl in a polka dot dress", a second gunman theory and sightings of a number of known CIA operatives in the ballroom on that fateful night.
O'Sullivan's documentary does not supply any ready answers, but it seems to lean strongly towards the theory that rogue operatives within the CIA had Kennedy bumped off because of his liberal attitudes, his empathy with the poor and his involvement with the Bay of Pigs. Maybe we'll never know the truth. But this film does raise many questions that do need to be answered, and it raises them in a calm and thoughtful manner. One does have to wonder, though, what sort of country the US might be today if Bobby Kennedy had lived to become president. I think we can safely say that it would be a much kinder, gentler country than it is under the current buffoon.