There are movies meant to entertain you, and then there are films meant to move you. “Bobby,” a fictional drama which documents the final hours of Senator and Presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy’s life, definitely falls into the latter category. Written and directed by Emilio Estevez, it is an ambitious effort to illustrate how America was forever changed when Kennedy, who had already won presidential primaries around the country, was fatally shot in Los Angeles’s Ambassador Hotel on June 5, 1968.

The film’s star-studded ensemble cast quickly catches the viewer’s eye. Actors including Anthony Hopkins, Demi Moore, Sharon Stone, Lindsay Lohan, Elijah Wood, William H. Macy, Helen Hunt, Christian Slater, Laurence Fishburne, Joshua Jackson, Martin Sheen, Ashton Kutcher, Freddy Rodriquez, Heather Graham and Harry Belafonte give outstanding performances designed to culminate in one final emotional ending.

Rather than focusing on any one character, “Bobby” tells the stories of characters whose lives, for various reasons, brought them to The Ambassador Hotel on that notorious day. Similar to the Oscar-winning film “Crash,” there are no particular characters on which “Bobby” is based; instead, Estevez artfully dances between intertwining sub-plots until they all convene in the final scene.

Hopkins gives his usual deep performance as the hotel’s retired doorman who still returns to his former workplace each day; Moore plays a drunken entertainer who is more focused on getting her hands on another bottle of liquor than she is about saving her broken marriage (husband played by Estevez); Macy plays the hotel’s manager who, despite his intolerance for racism in the hotel, manages to fool around on his wife, a hotel beautician, (Stone); Jackson plays a volunteer on Kennedy’s campaign; Hunt and Sheen play married socialites visiting the hotel and Lohan and Wood play a couple who marry at the hotel to keep him from fighting in the Vietnam War.

The most surprising breakout performance belongs to Lohan, whose charismatic role almost makes you forget about her Hollywood antics that are persistently splashed across tabloid covers. The film at least gives hope to her artistic credibility.

There are some moments that the film could have done without – Kutcher’s LSD-fuelled rant is tiresome, and Rodriguez’s portrayal as King Arthur to give away tickets to a Dodgers game is, at best, corny and irrelevant. But Estevez’s use of real footage throughout the film – Kennedy is not played by an actor, but instead appears as himself – overshadows these inadequacies. This element of the film transports the viewer so that you find yourself almost sitting transfixed in front of Kennedy himself.

“Bobby,” which was filmed over a period of 35 days and with a meager $10 million budget, proves that the power of film doesn’t reside in big budgets, state-of-the-art effects or sexy stars.

The brilliance of the film is that it stays with you for much longer than its two hours of screen time. It stimulates you – provoking thought not about the handsome or beautiful stars that grace the screen, but about the trials and tribulations of a decade. And while there is no surprise ending, “Bobby” still manages to keep you on the tip of your seat – waiting to see how the stories will merge and what the final outcome will be.

Estevez’s effort to evoke comparisons between the Vietnam War era and present day America is quite apparent. While the film depicts the shooting of Kennedy, which occurred in the hotel’s kitchen on route to a press conference, Kennedy himself speaks about the consequences of violence and senseless acts of bloodshed, acts which, ironically, would take his life. As Kennedy’s voice plays in the background, you can’t help but wonder why, after 38 years have passed, we are still waging wars and fighting battles both on the home front and abroad.

Estevez concludes the film with Kennedy’s final speech, which was given at The Ambassador Hotel just moments before his death. Kennedy speaks about “the divisions, the violence and the disenchantment with our society.” He said that despite “divisions – whether it’s between blacks and whites, between the poor and the more affluent, or between age groups, or in the war in Vietnam,” we can work together. And that’s exactly what “Bobby” endeavors to make the viewer realize.

No matter what political party you support, what background you come from or where your dreams take you, “Bobby” is a film that has the power to strike us all. While it centers on one day in one hotel, it illustrates that one person has the ability to inspire hope to an entire nation’s people. It shows that there is a common thread that weaves throughout all Americans, no matter the color of their skin, money in the bank or mistakes made; What makes this nation, as Kennedy said, “a great country, an unselfish country and a compassionate country,” is that its citizens have the power to unite out of, if nothing more, a common goal of sharing hope for the future.

Rating: 4 Stars

Total stars possible: 4

Megan Chuchmach can be reached at [email protected]