Review: Bobby

UK release date: 26th January

Despite the title, this is not a biopic of US presidential hopeful Robert Kennedy but a snapshot of a precise time and place in history. The drama unfolds in a single momentous day in 1968 at the Los Angeles hotel that acted as Kennedy’s campaign headquarters.

Director Emilio Estevez personalises the story with glimpses into the lives of hotel staff, guests and members of the senator’s campaign team, played by a starry ensemble cast that includes Anthony Hopkins, Demi Moore and Elijah Wood. But it’s Sharon Stone who impresses the most, barely recognisable as the hotel stylist whose manager husband (William H Macy) is having an affair with a switchboard operator (Heather Graham).

With so many characters on show, the movie tends to lack a little in narrative drive (and the dialogue sometimes seems heavy and self-important), but what it does brilliantly is re-create the mood of the time. The real Bobby Kennedy is seen in archive footage and while he’s seemingly reduced to a supporting player in the film that bears his name, the promise he represented infuses everything. Of course most viewers will know how it ends, but that does not make those final scenes any less heart-rending

Radio Times rating:

****

UK cinema certificate 15
Running time 116mins

Review by Brian Pendreigh

News: Anthony Hopkins

After taking on just one of the many interesting roles in this week’s Bobby, Hopkins will be taking a far more prominent position in his next outing – as writer, director and star of the wilfully experimental Slipstream, a surreal, existentialist Charlie Kauffman-style tale of an aging screenwriter whose characters start to appear in the real world, prompting much musing on the nature of reality, memory and death. Fun may not be the word, but it certainly sounds intriguing, with good reports this week from the Sundance Film Festival, where it’s just had its first screenings.

After that, it’s back to more familiar fare for Hopkins with Fracture (due in the Spring), where he’ll play a Hannibal Lecter-style intelligent murderer, as the wise older man in academia-set drama The City of Your Destination, and as yet another Butler, opposite Morgan Freeman, in Harry and the Butler (both due 2008).

Initially likely to attract most excitement, however, is the big budget adaptation of Dark Age classic Beowulf, where Hopkins will take on the put-upon King Hrothgar opposite Ray Winstone’s Beowulf and a monstrous Grendel voiced by Crispin Glover. And, in terms of full-on Hopkins-acting-his-guts-out potential, his turn as novellist Leo Tolstoy, opposite Paul Giamatti and Meryl Streep, in biopic The Last Station could prove one to excite the awards panels in a year or two, as the aging writer frets over combining his wealth and fame with his high principles. Not something, on the evidence of Slipstream, that Hopkins has much difficulty in doing.

News: Helen Hunt

Since making the swtich from the small to the big screen with As Good As It Gets nearly 10 years ago, Hunt’s been a surprisingly infrequent sight for an actress who had appeared to have made it to the big time, with this week’s Bobby her first cinematic outing in almost 2 years. For her next outing, though, she’ll be moving behind the camera, writing and directing (as well as starring alongside Colin Firth, Bette Midler and Matthew Broderick) Then She Found Me, revolving around a woman going throug a midlife crisis. It would, however, be churlish to suggest that Hunt will be writing from experience.

News: Heather Graham

Though once firmly an A-lister after her Austin Powers and Boogie Nights escapades, Graham hasn’t been seen much in the way of cinematic success in recent years, with this week’s Bobby being her highest-profile film since 2001’s disappointing From Hell. Still, judging by her upcoming movies, this looks like it could be entirely deliberate, as she seems to prefer her indy flicks these days – with Bobby itself, despite the insanely impressive cast, also being independently produced.

Assuming any of these get released on this side of the Atlantic, Graham will next be seen in romantic comedy Gray Matters, depressing-sounding drama Adrift in Manhattan, gritty LA-set thriller Broken, and 1960s-set family drama A West Texas Children’s Story, where she’ll play the high-profile-sounding character “Cassie’s Aunt”, with fellow former A-listers Val Kilmer and Matthew Modine in the leads.

News: Lindsay Lohan

This week’s Bobby is yet another step on the path to Lohan estabilishing herself as a serious, grown-up actress, rather than merely yet another former child star turned alcohol-fuelled tabloid-fodder, and most agree that she makes a decent job of it.

Just shown at the Sundance Film Festival is another grown-up movie, Chapter 27, which revolves around the life of Mark David Chapman, played by the often rather good Jared Leto, in the days leading up to his murder of ex-Beatle John Lennon in 1980 (a mere six years before Lohan was born), and she’s getting ready fortaking the lead in serious thriller I Know Who Killed Me, about a girl who develops twin personalities after avicious kidnapping.

She’ll also be going literary in her bid to be taken seriously, first cropping up alongside Sean Bean and Annette Benning in Oscar Wilde adaptation A Woman of No Importance, before starring alongside Keira Knightley in The Best Time of Our Lives, about Welsh poet Dylan Thomas, and opposite Oscar nominees David Strathairn, Ellen Burstyn and Ann-Margaret in The Loss of a Teardrop Diamond, from a screenplay by Tennessee Williams – not to mention Cyrano de Bergerac-based romantic comedy Speechless.

First of all, though, she’ll star opposite Jane Fonda as yet another rebellious teenager in teen comedy/drama Georgia Rule – during the filming of which the youngster immitated her character by getting so out of control she was officially reprimanded by the production company for failing to turn up to shoots thanks to her all-night partying. Tut tut…

News: Sharon Stone

Stone’s attempt at a comeback in Basic Instinct 2 has just earned her her 7th Razzie nomination, this time for Worst Actress, so her good turn in this week’s Bobby should prove some cheer. Of her three upcoming movies, however, only one looks set to give her any more good notices, the first two – indy flicks If I Had Known I Was A Genius and When A Man Falls In The Forest – looking unlikely to attract much notice, even if they can secure a release on this side of the pond.

Much more promising is the post-Watergate political drama Dirty Tricks, in which she’ll star alongside Jim Broadbent (as disgraced President Richard Nixon), Annette Benning, Gwyneth Paltrow, Brad Pitt and Meryl Streep. With a cast like that, it should prove something special – but will it be enough to get her career going on the right track again?

News: Ashton Kutcher

The toyboy hubby of Demi Moore is going to be hard to avoid at the multiplexes this month, cropping up in the Kevin Costner-starring The Guardian, out this week, before appearing amidst the impressive ensemble cast of actor-turned-director Emilio Estevez’s much-anticipated political drama Bobby – which debuts at the London Film Festival on the 26th – about the assassination of JFK’s brother Bobby Kennedy.

He currently has no other projects in the pipeline, taking a well-earned break after the eight months of hard physical training he did before his appearance alongside Costner in The Guardian.