Junto Boys

BOBBY (2006) (A Movie Review)

I can imagine that Bobby Kennedy’s assassination had a profound effect on America and especially so to the American Left. My mother who shook hands with Bobby a few months before his assassination talked about it on several occasions during my childhood. She wasn’t very political but Camelot wasn’t about politics but royalty and Bobby was the crown prince.

Forgotten is that he worked for Senator Joe McCarthy and was even best man at his wedding for crying out loud. Bobby knew all the angles fighting commies with Uncle Joe in the 50s and then prosecuting the Republican leaning Teamsters in the 1960s while ignoring the corruption of the Democrat leaning AFL-CIO. When Civil Rights looked politically viable he was for that too and when the Vietnam war became unpopular he hated it.

Bobby's assassination means that he is the perfect President that never was. He would have ended the war and racism and poverty and healed all that ails us. Idealism requires that Bobby wasn't an calculating union busting McCarthyite turned dove, but a true believer. He wasn't Humphrey or McGovern or other Democrats that would have bungled the message, but the one we would have listened to.

And to Emilo's credit the archival footage he chooses here is really impressive. Bobby connected with people in a way that candidates no longer do. But the tough reality is that Bobby had very little chance of winning the 1968 Democrat nomination. The primaries were a smaller part of the delegate count back then and the party insiders were going to nominate VP Humphrey regardless of the voters. But rather than be realistic, a certain part of the Left imagines Camelot II stopped by inefficient gun control legislation. That night wasn't just another tragedy for the Kennedy family, but a turning point where the country was forever lost.

The film though is about that day in the Ambassador hotel and the people that spend it getting ready for Bobby’s arrival. Therefore most of the movie could have been made independent of Bobby storyline since so many sub plots make it seem more like an Arthur Hailey story. Rather than go into the mundane lives that are shattered when the real hero is fell, let’s just say that it comes off pretty well and though it’s not saying a whole lot, it’s Emilo’s best movie yet. His goal of making Bobby significant works for a guy like me who thinks that even an underdog win by Kennedy wouldn't have shifted the country all the much.