Posted on 11/24/2006 11:01:01 AM PST by Fiji Hill
BOBBY
Bobby uses an all-star cast to follow more than twenty characters through one of the most fateful days in American history.
CLIP: “Senator Kennedy, welcome to the Ambassador Hotel.” “Thank you very much.”
That’s Anthony Hopkins as a hotel doorman who joins Sharon Stone, Demi Moore, Lawrence Fishburne, Christian Slater, and many others to dramatize the night of Robert Kennedy’s assassination at his LA victory celebration in 1968.
CLIP: “What if Kennedy loses?” “We can all forget it now. I’m 19, Jimmy, I don’t want to go to Vietnam.” “Do you?” “Now that Dr. King is gone, I don’t have nobody.”
This is a particularly moving film for me because I was there as a young Kennedy volunteer on that June night when Bobby was shot. I can confirm that director/writer Emilio Estevez gets most of the feelings of the occasion right. But, the melodramatic, multi-character format proves somewhat uneven and distracting. Rated R for language, violence, and drug content…
THREE STARS for the intriguing but imperfect Bobby.
That’s a wrap. I’m Michael Medved for Eye on Entertainment.
That's what I want to know. Do we get to see St. Bobby and Peter Lawford committing their dirty? Probably not. Murders committed by Kennedy's don't count...it's only when Kennedy's are murdered that we're interested.
The film was reviewed by our local guy - it's boring, basically tells about the boring people that were there working, primarily. If it were not for the newsreels of "Bobby" it would not really be about "Bobby" at all.
I don't get it - why would anyone want to know anything about the people that happened to be working at the hotel at the time? If the film was some insightful stuff about "Bobby" it may be worth viewing, but save your money on this one.
I'm not so sure RFK of 1962 was the same guy as RFK of 1968.
Extra security might have made a difference and perhaps not. Kennedy had the image of a populist and insisted on pressing flesh.
***
You may be right...I don't know. I was thinking possibly another pair of eyes may have spotted Sirhan Sirhan sooner, or something. But if I were the one who decided to decline the extra security, I would have carried around some rather heavy guilt after Kennedy was shot.
As was pointed out, the Kennedys were akin to the Republican conservatives of today from a political standpoint. Now as to personal morals, well, that's another story.
What would the Estevez/Sheen clan have for careers if it weren't for the Kennedy family (or similar) liberal political dramas? B-O-R-I-N-G !!
If you want to learn about RFK's support for Israel or his service on the staff of Senator Joe McCathy (R-Wis.)--perhaps the Left's biggest bête noir--you won't find it in this film.
Surrender to the Communists who assassinated Jack? Appeasement of the Jihadists who assassinated Bobby?
Once again, homage to America's royalty who, at best, lead a less than normal life. At worst, the power of corruption.
But we are "OK" with that.
I sure won't see it. I am sure Bobby was a great guy despite political disagreements.
But, I just can't see it.....the movie is going to make the guy a god.
Soap-operatic Bobby won’t make history
Although the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy is the reason behind actor-writer-director Emilio Estevez’s long-in-preparation Bobby, Kennedy himself is barely in the film.
He’s occasionally seen in newsreel footage, usually as a face on a TV screen. The emotional finale of the film, which re-creates the assassination of the senator in the kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel, in Los Angeles, in the early morning hours of June 5, 1968, shortly after Kennedy won the hotly contested California presidential primary, is a combination of new footage restaged by Estevez and newsreel footage taken at the time. (You can always tell the new footage because Kennedy is only seen out of focus or from the rear in it.)
An actor playing Sirhan Sirhan, the assassin, is seen even more briefly, uttering only a few words as he pulls the trigger.
Rather than a replay of historic facts, Estevez has “re-imagined” June 4, 1968, the day leading up to RFK’s victory speech early the next morning, with 22 fictional characters. They range from a hotel switchboard operator involved in an adulterous affair with the hotel manager to a young man who is trying to avoid serving in Vietnam by marrying a pretty friend. They’re all placed at the hotel on June 4 and their little stories, shuffled back and forth in the editing room, all play out while leading up to RFK’s assassination that night.
I did notice in the trailer, one comment made is: "Johnson got us into this war."
Eisenhower (the Peacemaker in Korea) had considered the use of American combat troops in Vietnam, but knew it would be difficult to gain political support. Bobby Kennedy, was willing to let history know exactly what his brother's intentions in Vietnam had been as early as 1964 and 1965, before it was called "Johnson's War."
In a series of oral history interviews for the JFK Library, RFK said that "it was worthwhile for psychological, political reasons" to stay in Vietnam.
RFK said: "The President felt that he had a strong, overwhelming reason for being in Vietnam and that we should win the war in Vietnam....If you lost Vietnam, I think everybody was quite clear that the rest of Southeast Asia would fall." (32)
John Bartlow Martin point-blank asked RFK: "if the President was convinced that the United States had to stay in Vietnam." The one-word response was "Yes." (33)
That's a good question. He only appears for a few seconds, when he opens fire, and he isn't even named.
No doubt you're right. But he also wasn't the RFK of 2006.
Kind of bugs me in the preview with the whole "the border crossed us" comment from the Hispanic guy. Way to make RFK seem to have a stance on a modern issue.
&&
Yeah, I caugh that one too. Nauseating.
But, I just can't see it.....the movie is going to make the guy a god.
***
Yes...a god to the socialist leftists -- this is probably just going to be another piece of revisionist history, principally aimed at those who weren't alive in the 1960's. Sorta like the newer histories of Pearl Harbor and the dropping of the bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Guess the folks spewing this garbage figure most people won't look up the real story. And, sadly, they're probably right.
They've got some guy named David Kobzantsev playing Sirhan Sirhan. This is outrageous! You would think the Crazed-Arab-Muslim-American community would be UP IN ARMS and DEMAND that only a Crazed-Arab-Muslim-American play the assassin!
Polluting the ocean floor! Aaack!
The modern democrat party was formed in 1968 at the Chicago convention.
One of the great tragedies of 1968 was the vidtory of Cranston, a hard core leftist, over Rafferty, a solid conservative. A lot of liberal Republicans were unhapppy with the primary result, and some supported Cranston, who won by a narrow margin.
It provides no information whatsoever about the killer.
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