Unfortunate Son
Bobby. Emilio Estevez, Laurence Fishburne, Anthony
Hopkins, Helen Hunt, Ashton Kutcher, William H. Macy, Lindsay
Lohan, and Demi Moore star in a film written and directed by
Estevez.
Reviewed by Molly Freedenberg
Every movie has a purpose: to entertain, to
give information, to persuade, or to inspire action, to name a few.
And Bobby fulfills its purpose brilliantly — once you figure out
what that purpose is: to give context to RFK’s assassination, what
he represented, and why his death was so tragic; but even more
importantly, to evoke in the viewer the emotional impact of this
historic event.
In fact, the film isn’t really about Bobby Kennedy at all,
except in an abstract way. (His only appearance in the film is
through actual newsreels — no actor plays Bobby.) Instead, it
centers on the people at the Ambassador Hotel the night Kennedy was
assassinated.
At first, the film comes off as nothing more than a pastiche of
characters representing 1968. Though engaging, and though each of
the actors gave reputable performances, there was no clear central
story, rendering the movie almost pointless.
Luckily, the characters are all engaging. What the movie lacks
in clear plotting, it makes up for in building emotional investment
in these characters and what Bobby Kennedy represents to them. And
that’s the film’s brilliance.
Because when Bobby is shot (and I hope I’m not giving anything
away here), it’s surprisingly traumatic — so much so that I sobbed
for a good five minutes. And that’s when it became clear that the
point of the movie was to bring me to this emotional climax. It
recreated for me the way it must have felt to be my mom, my dad, my
uncle in 1968, so that I could feel what they felt when Kennedy was
murdered. And this, in turn, gave me a visceral, instinctive
understanding of both the lingering activism and also the
disillusionment that’s impacted their generation since.
There are elements in the film that clearly suggest it’s also a
commentary on our current electoral system, on the war in Iraq, and
on modern-day racism. But its greatest value is as the best kind of
history lesson: one that skips dates and facts and takes you
straight to how people feel.