Venice. Bobby.

It's not just the cast that has people in Venice buzzing about Emilio Estevez's Bobby, writes the Boston Herald's Stephen Schaefer: "Estevez manages a look not so much at a lost era but one that mirrors RFK's vision of what American can be." The film "has amazing similarities to our own time" and "left me stunned."

"True, it is not one of those auteurist multi-strand films like Magnolia that provokes and challenges its audience; rather it's better thought of as a hipper, more politicised take on the Grand Hotel genre," writes Lee Marshall for Screen Daily, and I doubt it's much of a spoiler to note how the assassination is handled: "The chaos of the moment is conveyed by jerky handheld camera movement, while the loss to the nation is brought home by the original campaign speech that plays out over these scenes of panic and desperation, in which Kennedy talks about the violence, the income gap, and the ethnic divisions that plagued his country. Few audiences will resist the obvious hint that Kennedy's words apply equally well to the USA in 2006."

Updated through 9/7.

Variety's Deborah Young is also reminded of Grand Hotel and takes note of "one of the starriest casts in recent memory: Anthony Hopkins (also an executive producer), Sharon Stone, Demi Moore, Harry Belafonte, Laurence Fishburne, Lindsay Lohan, Martin Sheen, Helen Hunt, Christian Slater, William H Macy, Elijah Wood and Estevez himself." But perhaps what's most notable about this "deeply involving" film is that, "Though Estevez's script predates 9/11, it carries an eerie topicality that makes many of its insights instantly click."

Mike Collett-White reports on the press conference: "'The nation changed that night,' said Estevez, who recalled shaking hands with Robert Kennedy when he was a boy aged five. 'It was the third strike. It was the turning point. I believe we went into a free fall after that... (Richard) Nixon was elected president... and we became cynical and resigned and it was the death of decency, it was the death of hope.'"

Update: "Estevez obviously is one of the many who believe that Bobby Kennedy traveled from his bullying younger days via the Damascus road, picking up an epiphany along the way that made him America's last great hope following the death of Martin Luther King Jr," writes the Hollywood Reporter's Ray Bennett. "Whether or not Bobby Kennedy was the man his supporters believed him to be, the film makes a persuasive case that something important in America was silenced when he was gunned down."

Update, 9/7: Estevez's "attempt to shoehorn what he sees as the grand themes of the period into his choppy, unsubtle script are embarrassing, and never more so than when he tries - and fails dreadfully - to recreate the experience of an LSD trip," fumes Time Out's Dave Calhoun. "The flaws of Bobby are so horrible that you couldn't care less about what RFK has to say as one of his speeches rambles over the hysterical closing scenes."

Posted by dwhudson at September 6, 2006 1:08 AM