Movie Review: Bobby

Bobby, Emillio Estevez's long-awaited ensemble piece about the 1968 assasination of Senator (and presidential hopeful) Robert F. Kennedy, is a flawed film.
That doesn't, however, mean that you shouldn't go see it. Featuring a cast of, if not thousands, at least tens of Hollywood names, the movie weaves together vignettes of life in the Ambassador Hotel on June 5, 1968. Just after midnight, Kennedy, exiting the hotel through the kitchen, would be shot, and his assasination hangs over the events of the movie, keeping viewers on their toes looking for foreshadowing, or some kind of Deep Meaning.

There may not be any, but among the oddly paced scenes (some of which include dialogie so weirdly clunky as to make Houstonist sit up and wonder why Helen Hunt was monologuing at us) there are some standout performances and some affecting and topical moments. The best performances come from Six Feet Under's Freddy Rodriguez (also currently starring with Christian Bale in Harsh Times) and, unfortunately, Lindsay Lohan.

Don't get us wrong--we actually kind of like Lohan and are glad to see her do well, but her fantastically understated performance as a girl marrying a high school classmate she barely knows to keep him out of Vietnam just shows us a tantalizing (and frustrating) glimpse of her talent. Here's hoping she doesn't throw it all away.

The movie is worth seeing not only for those two performances: it also features a just-as-good-as-always turn by William H. Macy and strong work by Sharon Stone and Estevez himself as boozy singer/scenery-chewer Demi Moore's downtrodden husband. As for Kennedy himself, he appears only in archival footage, and the ending sequence, featuring agonizing reaction shots as characters contemplate the end of the peace-loving senator's life, is worth the film's price of admission. Instead of music, we hear Kennedy speaking in a way politicians don't seem to these days--totally simply, and very eloquently.

Hearing his words may well be the point of this movie, and it's a worthwhile one.

Grade: B