
Tuesday, June 4, 1968: the California Presidential primary. As day breaks, Robert F. Kennedy arrives at the Ambassador Hotel. He'll campaign, then speak to supporters at midnight. To capture the texture of the late 1960s, we see vignettes at the hotel: a couple marries so he can avoid Vietnam, kitchen staff discuss race and baseball, a man cheats on his wife, another is fired for racism, a retired hotel doorman plays chess in the lobby with an old friend, a campaign strategis... (Full plot summary below)
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Tuesday, June 4, 1968: the California Presidential primary. As day breaks, Robert F. Kennedy arrives at the Ambassador Hotel. He'll campaign, then speak to supporters at midnight. To capture the texture of the late 1960s, we see vignettes at the hotel: a couple marries so he can avoid Vietnam, kitchen staff discuss race and baseball, a man cheats on his wife, another is fired for racism, a retired hotel doorman plays chess in the lobby with an old friend, a campaign strategist's wife needs a pair of black shoes, two campaign staff trip on LSD, a lounge singer is on the downhill slide. Through it all, we see and hear R.F.K. calling for a better society and a better nation.
Leave your thoughts about Bobby.
| San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalleWhy such a structurally scattered movie should hang together at all is a mystery. That it does more than that, that it works brilliantly, is a miracle, or at the very least the product of unquantifiable causes. |
| Seattle Post-IntelligencerWilliam ArnoldFor all its unevenness, Bobby is a powerful, poignant movie and its ending -- played over a long excerpt of one of RFK's most compassionate speeches, voiced with none of the cliches of political rhetoric -- was, for me, the movie year's single most devastating sequence. |
| Christian Science MonitorPeter RainerIt's a sideways view of a national trauma. The large cast includes standout performances from such unlikelies as Demi Moore, playing an alcoholic crooner, and Estevez himself, as her long-suffering husband. Everyone in this film is powerful. |
| TV Guide MagazineMaitland McDonaghThough Estevez's achievement doesn't quite live up to his ambitions -- the climax of Altman's "Nashville" (1975) evokes the same brutal loss of innocence to more shattering effect -- it still contains enough powerful moments to balance the weaker sections. |
| PremiereScott WarrenAlll in all, however, Estevez has pulled together the best political drama, fiction or otherwise, in recent memory. |
| Baltimore SunChris KaltenbachThe film's impact and poignancy are undeniable. |
| Austin ChronicleJosh RosenblattThe movie isn't about Kennedy; rather, Kennedy is the sun around which all the other planets of the film revolve. And like some epic Louis B. Mayer picture from the Thirties, Bobby has a thousand stars in its galaxy, some of them great (Fishburne, Rodríguez), some of them not (Wood, Hunt), and one of them brilliant (Hopkins). |
| VarietyDeborah YoungEmilio Estevez's Bobby is a passionate outcry for peace and justice in America that becomes deeply involving by the final climactic scene. |
| Washington PostAnn HornadayBobby, even if it suffers from a few silly scenes, gets more right than it does wrong. |
| Chicago ReaderJonathan RosenbaumSo keenly felt and so deeply imagined I couldn't help but be moved, even grateful for its bleeding-heart nostalgia. |