Bobby (2006)
John Casey: Anthony Hopkins
Nelson: Harry Belafonte
Paul: William H. Macy
Miriam: Sharon Stone
Angela: Heather Graham
Virginia Fallon: Demi Moore
Tim Fallon: Emilio Estevez
Jack: Martin Sheen
Samantha: Helen Hunt
Phil: David Krumholtz
Lenka Janacek: Svetlana Metkina
Wade: Joshua Jackson
Dwayne: Nick Cannon
Patricia: Joy Bryant
Cooper: Shia LeBeouf
Jimmy: Brian Geraghty
Fisher: Ashton Kutcher
Susan Taylor: Mary Elizabeth Winstead
Diane: Lindsay Lohan
William: Elijah Wood
José: Freddy Rodríguez
Miguel: Jacob Vargas
Timmons: Christian Slater
Edward Robinson: Laurence Fishburne
MGM and The Weinstein Company present a film written and directed by Emilio Estevez.
Running time: 119 minutes
Rated R for violence, drug use, strong language, and adult situations.
Release Date: November 23, 2006
Review Date: May 2, 2007
------------------------------------------------
I’m sure that everyone who stays in a hotel has their own story, and I’m sure most of them are very interesting. Emilio Estevez surely thinks that way, as he has created about two dozen characters and fictitiously dropped in what their last few hours at the Ambassador Hotel were like before the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy. What exactly the point of it all is I’m still not sure, but they all sure did like Bobby Kennedy. Except for that Sirhan Sirhan fellow, which dramatically cuts down on his screen time.
There is an awful lot going on here, with no one character seemingly more important or more identifiable than the one before it. The hotel’s manager (Macy) is cheating on his wife (Stone) with a receptionist (Graham), while his wife is giving a young bride-to-be (Lohan) a pedicure before her wedding. The only reason she’s getting married is so a friend of her’s (Wood) doesn’t have to go to the front lines at Vietnam.
There’s a retired doorman (Hopkins) who plays a game of chess with his friend (Belafonte). There are a bunch of young volunteers to RFK’s campaign; a couple who do their job (Jackson, Cannon) and a couple who take off (LaBeouf, Geraghty) to trip acid with the hotel’s resident hippie drug dealer (Kutcher). Then there are various members of the kitchen staff who have to deal with a racist boss (Slater) and whether or not Don Drysdale can toss six straight shutouts.
I believe I need a deep inhalation after all that.
Bobby isn’t nearly as overwhelming as its twenty-plus main characters would make it seem. All of the characters involved are sympathetic enough and I didn’t find any of the performances to be unconvincing. The aimless nature of their respective days and scenes are all leading up to the arrival of Robert F. Kennedy to give his final speech late that evening at the hotel. When RFK - who appears almost entirely via actual archival footage - shows up is when the film finally has some sort of combining thread, but that’s not until it’s final scene.
In the mean time, the film is never boring but just left me wondering, “Why?” At its core, Bobby really has nothing to do with the title character and it seems that only a few of the parts of this story wouldn’t have been there had RFK not been in the picture. They don’t all become united until the bullets start firing, and at that point it’s time for the credits to roll. Maybe it’s just me, but I might’ve been more interested in seeing how these people’s lives turn out after the assassination.
There’s not really anything wrong with Bobby at its core, and I didn’t feel like I’d wasted my time after it was over. But, in the end, most of it just feels unnecessary.
**1/2 (out of ****)