The year is 1968. A controversial war rages overseas. Planet of the Apes dazzles American audiences. Robert "Bobby" Kennedy is nearing the first victory on the road to winning the US presidential election where he promises to end racial prejudice, pointless and hateful violence, as well as the terrible crisis in Vietnam.
And then, the night his presidential candidacy is to be decided, he is shot and killed in the Ambassador Hotel in L.A.
Bobby is not Emilio Estevez's directorial debut, but it may well be the first honest-to-God good movie he's directed. The film has an ensemble cast of characters that each seem to feel a different connection to then-Senator Kennedy, whether it's simply greeting him and welcoming him into the hotel in the case of John Casey (played by Anthony Hopkins) or working by his side as a campaign volunteer like it is for Wade (Joshua Jackson).
While Wade feels connected to the democratic process, constantly disparaging a reporter from socialist Czechoslovakia, his black sidekick Dwayne (Nick Cannon) believes with all his heart that, after the murder of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Bobby Kennedy is the last hope for putting an end to racial prejudice.
Over the course of the movie, we also follow the stories of the hotel's manager (William H. Macy) and his wife, who finds out from the hotel's food and beverage manager (Christian Slater) that Macy is cheating on her with a phone operator (Heather Graham). Macy's wife happens to be the hotel's stylist. She cuts the hair of the stars who stay at the Ambassador Hotel, including Virginia Fallon (Demi Moore) who is slated to sing tonight prior to her introduction of Kennedy himself.
William and Diane (acted out by Elijah Wood and Lindsay Lohan) are getting married in the church so that William won't be drafted to go to Vietnam. He's getting cold feet because he doesn't think Diane really loves him. Diane is slowly finding out that she really, really does.
Cooper and Jimmy (the up-and-coming Shia LeBeouf and Brian Geraghty) are also volunteers for Kennedy's campaign, but they decide to take the day off. They get some LSD from a stoner named Fisher (Ashton Kutcher) and spend the day tripping.
All of these stories and more (there are tons of them involving even more well-known actors not mentioned yet, like Martin Sheen, Helen Hunt, Emilio Estevez himself, Laurence Fishburne, Harry Belafonte, and Sharon Stone) take place concurrently without much interaction between them until the final, destructive moment of the film: the Kennedy assassination.
This works both to the movie's benefit and detriment. While it's never difficult to keep the stories straight, there also isn't much story actually happening. It turns out what actually keeps you watching is the fact that the individual scenes are so short that you get the effect of plot. Instead, what you have is lots of character development with no real story development.
On the other hand, Bobby isn't about the myriad characters coursing their way through the hallways and tennis courts and swimming pools of the Ambassador Hotel. It's about the death of Robert Francis Kennedy. Moreover, it's about the death of everything he represented to the characters - freedom from racial division, from the unending pointless violence, from the Vietnam War and the draft and the countless Americans travelling home by way of body bag.
The point is... what's the point? Is this movie just a relic? Just a memory of Senator Kennedy as he would have been? Is it a call coming forward through time to look at our own situation? Is it saying we need a savior, and if so, is it saying our country's savior already died and that we already lamented this loss? Is Bobby just a love song for a fallen hero?
This is where the movie has its real flaws. Ashton Kutcher's mediocre performance can be overlooked because it is so miniscule. There are a couple of cheesy lines, like when Laurence Fishburne delivers a monologue to one of his prep chefs saying that the prep chef is a "future king," but the biggest problem the movie has is that the themes are blurred together so you can't figure out what Estevez was trying to get at, like so much ink running down soaked paper.
The condition of war, racial downtroddenness, high society and alcohol abuse, the emotional impact of human aging, death, life, youth, drug consumption -- I could keep on for quite some time. These things all have a prescence in Bobby. The trouble is simply figuring out why and for what purpose.
But don't let that fool you. The film is still gripping. A stark reality surrounds everything. A sense of innocence falls over everybody. Irony runs through Bobby, and builds tension. We, the audience, know that Kennedy will be dead by the time we leave the theater (or sofa), but the characters do not.
Bobby is unsure of itself, but still manages to be a powerful, moving picture that captures in its two hours a full snapshot of the 60's and the present-day ramifications of the tragic event on June 4, 1968.