Bobby

Bobby (Freddie Rodriguez, William H. Macy, Sharon Stone, Anthony Hopkins, Lindsay Lohan, Elijah Wood, Martin Sheen, Helen Hunt, Demi Moore) – The assassination of Bobby Kennedy on the night of his greatest political triumph serves as the backdrop for this Hotel-like drama that interweaves the stories of people at the ill-fated Ambassador Hotel on that June night in 1968.  Written and directed by Emilio Estevez (who’d-a-thunk?), this love story to the fallen hero is really quite powerful.  Estevez does a wonderful job of keeping the multiple stories straight and understandable for the audience while sprinkling in the politics, the attitudes, and the foretelling of the times.  A little schmaltzy but not too preachy, the film moves smoothly towards it inevitable conclusion, the post-midnight assassination of the second Kennedy, who was, to some, the second coming.  The multiple plotlines render all the stories simple and uncomplicated, but manage to create the drama of the day.  The performances are all appropriate, if not memorable, with the best being the tale of Jose, the busboy played by Freddie Rodriguez.   His love for the Dodgers and its ace, Don Drysdale’s quest for the consecutive shut-out record lives unrequited as he pulls a double-shift assigned to him and his fellow Mexican-Americans by his racist boss, played pitch-perfect by Christian Slater.  As fate has it, it is Jose at Bobby’s side right after the shooting.  He trades one potential memory for a date with destiny.  There must be better stories than others in this kind of movie, and the least relevant is the one between a rich couple in a May-December pairing of Estevez’s father, Martin Sheen, and Helen Hunt, who keeps proving to me that she is really a TV actress.  The former “brat packer” (he even manages to use his St. Elmo’s Fire co-star Demi Moore, who is awful) manages to use actual footage beautifully and doesn’t have to resort to getting a Bobby look-alike.  Sure, Estevez should have had fewer vignettes and more depth, but this movie is about the day the earth stood still, not about making the great American film.  The reviews have been mixed to negative because the story and the genre have been done before, but as historical drama, this is a must-see.