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Bobby

Written by Nobuhiro Hosoki

 

A former brat-pack boy of the 80s, Emilio Estevez has stepped up as writer and director of this new feature that intertwines 22 characters around a single galvanizing event on June 5, 1968.  That was the day that our country's noble-souled idealism was shattered by Robert Kennedy's assassination. He had won the primary in California and was about to give a speech at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles.

The story focuses on the somber backdrop of the hotel's guests and staff, briefly glimpsing into their lives as they prepared for the big event. In the kitchen, Jose (Freddy Rodriguez), one of the underpaid Latino staffers, was upset about drawing a double shift on that fatal night, because he had tickets to see the Dodgers, where pitcher Don Drysdale broke a record of six consecutive shutouts.  But he had the class to hand his tickets over to a black chef(Laurence Fishburne), who squared off with other staff members to give a powerful lesson about prejudice and racism. 

Then there is Diane (Lindsay Lohan), another hopeful embracer of idealism. Disgusted at the thought of seeing her friend William (Elijah Wood) coming home in a body bag, she took the drastic step of marrying him to keep him out of the Vietnam war. When Paul (William A. Macy), a hotel manager hears that Timmons(Christian Slater) failed to permit his kitchen staff to vote, he simply fired Timmons, although this insecure young guy gets his revenge with juicy gossip--by tipping off Paul's wife Miriam (Sharon Stone) about his affair with Angela(Heather Graham).

But one of the notable performances goes to Virginia Fallon (Demi Moore), the drunken and filthy-mouthed songbird who is scheduled to sing just before Bobby Kennedy is introduced. Her
self-destructive booze-binge is a sign of diminishing youth, which is clearly lost in a later incident.

Director Emilio Estevez enthusiastically uses Robert Altman's playbook by condensing this story into a huge ensemble cast with A-list talent. Of course, when you set yourself up with this complex ambition, it has some pitfalls, as when certain elements are sidetracked by the scene with a hippie, LSD-tripping drug dealer (Ashton Kutcher). 

But the heart of this film is in the right places. It is the vintage footage of Bobby's eloquent speech at the end that resonates with our minds and hopes. His was a soothing voice that was reaching out to a troubled nation. These days, it is almost inevitable that we should contrast those times with our current situation.  Bobby's mind has slowly come to inhabit our own--that's why this is not just his story, but the story of ordinary citizens like ourselves.

Written and directed by Emilio Estevez
Director of photography: Michael Barrett
Edited by Richard Chew
Music by Mark Isham
Production designer:Patti Podesta
Produced by Michel Litvak, Edward Bass and Holly Wiersma
Released by Metro Goldwyn Mayer and the Weinstein Company.
Running time: 111 minutes.

Cast: Harry Belafonte (Nelson)
Joy Bryant (Patricia)
Nick Cannon (Dwayne)
Emilio Estevez (Tim Fallon)
Laurence Fishburne (Edward Robinson)
Brian Geraghty (Cooper)
Heather Graham (Angela)
Anthony Hopkins (John Casey)
Helen Hunt (Samantha)
Joshua Jackson (Wade Buckley)
David Krumholtz (Phill)
Shia LaBeouf (Jimmy)
Lindsay Lohan (Diane)
William H. Macy (Paul Ebbers)
Svetlana Metkina (Lenka)
Demi Moore (Virginia Fallon)
Freddy Rodriguez (Jose Rojas)
Martin Sheen (Jack Stevens)
Christian Slater (Timmons)
Sharon Stone (Miriam Ebbers)
Jacob Vargas (Miguel)
Mary Elizabeth Winstead (Susan)
, and Elijah Wood (William Avary).