The time is 1968, the eve of Robert Kennedy’s smashing win in the California primary and his first giant step on the road to the presidency. The bearer of the Kennedy charisma after the assassination of JFK, Bobby had about three-quarters of what his older brother had and that would have been good enough to take him all the way.
But in the midst of his celebration he was stopped in his tracks by a Palestinian loner obsessed with American politics in the Middle East.
Stepping into the middle of this historical milieu is writer/director Emilio Estevez, son of Martin and Janet Sheen, herding a cast of a dozen stars in a fictional recreation of the lives and crises of the most turbulent times of the turbulent 1960s.
William Macy is at his cringing, guilt ridden, hand-wringing best as Paul the unfaithful husband and ethically awry manager of the luxury hotel where the Kennedy entourage is ensconced on the night of the election. He is meeting switchboard operator Heather Graham in a secretive affair in various hotel rooms as his wife, hotel hair stylist Sharon Stone, watches their marriage slowly disintegrate.
Martin Sheen is a campaign operative who is losing his marriage with Helen Hunt to the fever of high-stakes politics while they both lose their personalities to the campaign and the Democratic Party.
Writer/director Estevez is a house-husband who is losing his star-performer wife Demi Moore to the alcohol addiction that she hides in the free wheeling self indulgent cop-out of the 1960’s new liberalism.
Elijah Wood is marrying Lindsay Lohan in a pre-arranged union for the sole purpose of keeping him out of Viet Nam.
Harry Belafonte and Anthony Hopkins are scarred upper echelon party lions who have long since given their lives to the cause.
Manager Paul is outraged at the racist attitude of food and beverage manager Timmons (Christian Slater) who actually is a good deal more focused than Paul and a good deal more honest in his racist outlook.
Paul is going along for the ride of 1960s style liberal politics, swept into the fold of the Kennedy Camelot spirit while cook Robinson (Laurence Fishburne) and busboy Cooper (Shia LaBeouf) live the lives of poster boys for the upper class liberal elite such as campaign manager Wade (Joshua Jackson) and his preppy student volunteers who are as interested in drug experimentation as they are in helping the Kennedy campaign.
Wade’s counterpart in the trenches of the campaign is black political activist Dwayne (Nick Cannon) who is trying to do the right thing and work with the system while fighting off the temptation to join the militant ranks of the likes of the Black Panthers. Like busboy Cooper he lives day-to-day with a foot in each camp of the social dilemma; one side the nihilistic life of violent self-destruction for the cause and the other the extended torture of daily humiliation and tedious advance through playing the “system.”
Does all this work? Barely!
Compared to the tapestry of interlocking conversations and tightly woven editing of, say, ‘Mash,’ Altman’s masterpiece of the chaos of the politically adrift ‘60s in the setting of the Viet Nam war, ‘Bobby’ barely scratches the surface.
There is none of the miraculous intersecting conversations leading from one setting to the next, nor is there a hint of Ring Lardner’s sardonic writing underscoring frivolousness and indulgence side by side with violence and death.
Rather than reinforcing each other, the stories remain adrift, each one more or less on their own in the context of a political assassination. Like multiple episodes of “Hill Street Blues” told at the same time, they have the same feeling but are not one. The ending of the film devoted to the gloppy politic-speak of presidential candidates since the beginning of time tries to combine JFK and MLK but ends up sounding like Bush on LSD.
Even so the film creates vibrant feelings of hope and foreboding at the same time, like ‘American Graffiti’ alternating with ‘Apocalypse Now,’ much to the credit of lenser Michael Barrett and his darkly confined interior shots that compress the audience along with the giant cast into a claustrophobic microcosm.
Lives are lost to ambition and violence as lives are opened to the possibilities of love and understanding.
Death stands in contrast to life. Love succeeds and love fails, often just beyond the direct control of the characters. Stories are left unfinished, as was the work of Robert Kennedy.
Estevez’ film remains an ambitious experiment and, we hope, a stepping stone to great things yet to come.
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