FILM REVIEW – BOBBY (2006).
Extra-ordinary
semi-fictional account of the hours leading up to the real life assassination
of Robert (Bobby) Kennedy in 1968. The film does not focus on Bobby or his
alleged assassin, Sirhan Sirhan, but on the staff and guests and political
campaign supporters at the Ambassador Hotel Los Angeles, where the
assassination took place.
What
is impressive is that the film has a purposeful low key presentation effect
despite using sterling A-list cast, including William H. Macy, Anthony Hopkins,
Harry Belafonte, Demi Moore, Laurence Fishbourne, Sharon Stone, Martin Sheen
and his son, Emilio Estavez, who directed the film.
Despite
their status, everyone appears in the film at ordinary union rates of pay, and
most play ordinary, very understated and totally believable characters. Hopkins
& Belafonte are retired doormen playing chess and reminiscing on the
hotel’s glory days; Macy is shocked when he learns that the head of the kitchen
staff, Christian Slater, is a racist, refusing to let his immigrant staff have
time off to vote in the Democratic primaries, Elijah (Frodo) Wood gets into an
arranged marriage to get out of going to the Nam. Fishbourne escapes the
looming tragedy when presented with the gift of free tickets to a ball game by
a highly altruistic work friend who ought to have gone, but who is now doomed
to be among the many witnesses wounded (but not killed) in the shootings which
come only minutes from the end of the film creating the end of an era in just a
few genuinely shattering minutes.
There
is a very funny, silly sub-plot in which Shia LaBiouf, and Brian Geraghty are a
couple of campaigners who spend their entire time taking LSD in a hotel room,
only to face the bad trip of reality when tragedy finally strikes.
The
soundtrack is magnificent, with songs by the Moody Blues, Stevie Wonder and
Simon & Garfunkel, among others.
At
no stage does the film, though by no means an action flick, degenerate into
soap opera. It captures the mood and feel of an era on the brink of
disintegration perfectly. Though I was six then, the film leaves me feeling
that Bobby Kennedy’s death was a genuine tragic loss to humanity on the grand
scale.
The
finest vignette performance among many for me is that of a young black
campaigner, Dwayne, played by Nick Cannon, who is already deeply shaken by the
death of Martin Luther King (only a few days before that of Bobby Kennedy). He
pins all his hopes on Bobby as the last decent politician and humanitarian left
to turn to – he nervously meets him only minutes before the hopes he has
developed are so cruelly stolen from him.
Bobby,
fleetingly played by Dave Fraunces, is mostly only seen as himself in genuine
footage of his campaign on TV sets), and his speeches are powerfully deployed
in the minutes preceding and post-dating the shooting. He becomes the real star and focus of the
film. Sirhan Sirhan is only glimpsed in the instant of the shooting and David
Kobsantsev, who has played the role in a few US documentaries about the
assassination, plays him. This is a unique and very moving film about a man who
may be the best President the US never had.
LINKS
http://www.bobby-the-movie.com/index2.html
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0308055/
Arthur Chappell
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