Reviewed by Neil Davey
Stars Anthony Hopkins, Christian Slater, Martin Sheen, Helen Hunt, Emilio Estevez, Lindsay Lohan, Sharon Stone, William H Macy, Heather Graham, Martin Sheen
Written by Emilio Eztevez
Certification US R | UK 15 | Australia M
Runtime 120 minutes
Directed by Emilio Estevez
It’s good week for people who like a little moral with their entertainment. Over in Screen One, you have Blood Diamond, all redemption, violence and political amorality, while in Screen Two, you have Bobby. Neither film is perfect but, on balance, Bobby is slightly preferable if only because it’s the one you could more readily imagine watching again.
Bobby is a fine political drama, an ensemble piece about various characters in the Ambassador Hotel the night that Senator Robert Kennedy was assassinated. Its problems are the same as pretty much any other ensemble piece – with the possible exception of Robert Altman’s Short Cuts. By focusing on so many stories, you end up distracted by characters you really don’t give a monkey’s about while the ones you do get too little screen time. The film is certainly pertinent. Bobby Kennedy was widely regarded as THE Presidential candidate, the one who would inherit his (also assassinated) brother’s mantle and lead America – and the world – into a fabulous new era. Kennedy’s a fascinating character. If you’re struggling to picture him, imagine Jimmy Stewart in It’s A Wonderful Life. Now add George Bush’s personality. Now take away greed, incomprehensibility and general ignorance. Instead, add morality, forethought and intelligence. And likeability. And policies that don’t involve killing thousands or destroying the planet. Yeah. Exactly.
People from all walks of life wanted Bobby Kennedy to be President and the implication is that, if he had, we’d have seen a truly united United States. Accordingly, the film – directed with some surprising skill by Emilio ‘Breakfast Club’ Estevez – covers many bases, from minorities to the elderly, and works in many human / 1960’s-themed stories: ageing, racism, drug-taking, affairs, alcoholism, the Vietnam war, baseball, etc. The best of these – hotel manager William H Macy’s affair with a switchboard girl (Heather Graham) behind the back of his hairdresser wife (an impeccable Sharon Stone), Christian Slater’s racist kitchen manager, Lindsay Lohan’s teenage bride saving a schoolfriend from the draft and, especially, Helen Hunt and Martin Sheen’s stuttering marriage – are poignant and superbly played. Unfortunately, they seem to flash by while Estevez dwells on a pretty tedious acid trip for two of Kennedy’s party workers, the antics of a boozing nightclub singer (Demi Moore) and the apparently endless reminiscences of Anthony Hopkings’ former hotel doorman.
The real power though comes from the documentary footage and the recordings of Kennedy’s speeches. Ultimately it’s these rather than the characters that linger in the mind and make you wonder, inevitably, what life would – and, indeed, should – have been like had Kennedy taken power