RFK (2002)

Touches You

The Age of Commercialism

Best movie of this year hands down!

The biggest problem with this movie is it’s a little better than you think it might be, which somehow makes it worse. As in, it takes itself a bit too seriously, which makes most of the movie feel kind of dull.

This depiction of the life and times of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy is a good effort at capturing the essence of the man who might have been the 37th president, however I do believe that the overuse of John Kennedy's shadow throughout this film detracted somewhat from the story. Robert Kennedy did indeed feel the weight of his late brother's legacy after 1963, and the film is correct in showing this, however I would suggest that by 1966-1967, RFK had truly become his own person and the extensive use of JFK's shadow really serves no purpose other than to distract and even annoy. Performances are good overall, but I would agree with others that this film would've been better had it come out shortly after the 1968 assassination.

In today's world the words of Bobby Kennedy could not be more prescient. This movie plays around 4 major speeches and is bookended by the death of JFK and RFK's himself. There are a few clunker moments (Martin Donovan as an uninspired JFK), but Linus Roache's portrayal of RFK is remarkable and James Cromwell's LBJ so much more of the essence than Gambon's in the HBO film, A Path To War. Roache received a Golden Globe nomination for his performance. See this movie for that alone.

The only thing this TV-movie did better than the 1985 mini-series "Robert Kennedy & His Times" was the casting of Lyndon Johnson, though neither actor was remotely like the real man in manner, speech or action. These two docudramas cover virtually the same identical territory, though the 1985 one does it in 6 hours, and thus can go into much greater detail. I happened to watch them back-to-back (the 1985 mini-series is airing on the Starz TrueStories channel this month) and the mini-series is far better at getting into the mind of RFK--especially without ghostly pronouncements by his brother. Too bad the actor playing Johnson is so jarring, because most of the other casting is quite wonderful, especially Beatrice Straight as Rose and Veronica Cartwright as Ethel Kennedy. The blending of actual footage and newly shot footage is seamless and effective. The locations (Hickory Hill and Hyannisport) look far more like the real places than in the 2002 FX production.The casting of RFK and JFK is always problematic and neither of these productions does terribly well. At least not for those of us who remember the real men. But for those who want to know of these events, they are adequate. It's not the actors' faults. The Kennedy brothers were so visible, memorable and distinctive that unless you're both a great actor and a virtual lookalike, no one can do it.

First things first, I'm glad to see another movie that takes place in America that was totally filmed in Canada! Second, RFK should be the last film about RFK that the world should have to see for the next 20 years. We saw a side of RFK in the movie Hoffa. We saw another side of RFK in the HBO movie on the RAT PACK. And we've seen a handful of RFK sides in all those movies made on the Bay of Pigs and Cuba crisis and the others like it. Now, all that is left to make on RFK is the side of him that only RFK knew. The inner man, caught up with his own identity and the man that stood in the shadows of his brother JFK. It was good to see this kind of movie be made, then again, it doesn't do anything for the RFK genre which died years ago. Consider this movie the final nail in the RFK movie coffin. It's sad to say that a movie like this would not have been made in 1970, a few years after his death. Only now, when he and everybody close to him is now dead, does the American public get to see a movie showing these sides of the man's life. That's why Primary Colors is so credited since it was so much about Bill Clinton's legacy and it was filmed and shown during Clinton's administration.