Bobby

This season there are many movies but none very good.  Very disappointing.  I had the feeling that Bobby was going to more of the same but had an interest in seeing it anyway.  I wanted to see the star studded cast and also how Estevez portrayed Bobby Kennedy.

The movie as a whole isn’t terrific but a few things have stuck with me.  First of all the star studded cast is pretty impressive and there are definitely some really good performances.  I was also impressed by the huge undertaking that Emilio Estevez took.  Not only did he write the movie, he directed it.  Except for 3 other unmemorable movies that he wrote and directed back in the late 80’s, and then directing some TV pilots, this was a big leap.  Quite ambitious.  Impressive actually.  In many ways it will be more interesting to see what he does next.

The movie is about the day in the life of a variety of people who attended the event at the hotel where Kennedy gave a speech after winning the primaries in California.  Moments after that speech, he was shot as he made his way through the kitchen.  I didn’t realize that there was a handful of people who were shot that day in the kitchen.  They all survived and Estevez basically tells how they lived that day up to being in the kitchen that night.  You have the kids who are campaigning for Kennedy but decided to trip acid that day instead, the wealthy stockbroker and his lovely wife who is involved in the art world, the young girl who marries a guy in her graduating class to insure that he won’t be shipped off to the front line in Vietnam, there is the guy who manages the kitchen people in the hotel and the immigrant workers who who work for him, the alcoholic star who is performing at the hotel and her husband, the hair cutter to the stars and her husband who runs the hotel, and a few other cast of characters.  So you can see that the film takes on a lot.

What I really liked was how he never used an actor to play Kennedy.  He uses old footage and speeches which give the audience a real appreciation of the person that Bobby Kennedy was.  My mother has always said that if Bobby Kennedy was elected President in 1968, and he would have been, our country would be a very different place today.  When I listened to those speeches, I understood why. He was compassionate and he truly cared about the underdogs.  The immigrants, the African Americans, the poor and he was unhappy with the people in Washington not working together to make this country a better place.  He was the real deal.  His brother that died in WWII was groomed to be a President and then his father pushed Jack into that role but truthfully Bobby should have been the one.

If you close your eyes and listen to Kennedy at the end of the film, you realize he could be a candidate today in 2006.  He is talking about the exact same issues that we are facing today including an awful war that we shouldn’t be in.  We should only be so lucky to have a candidate like him, who is running because they really want to make a difference in 2008.  There is no doubt that every candidate cares at some level but there are so many political animals out there I always wonder about their actual agenda.  People really believed that Bobby Kennedy was hope and that his agenda was to make this country a better place from the bottom of his heart, plain and simple.  He knew he could create change. I hope someone like that appears on the horizon.  The next Presidential election is just around the corner.