Hot on the heels of the controversial Death of a President, about a fictitious Presidential assassination, comes a dramatisation of the last days of Bobby Kennedy, the man who might have been president had he not been assassinated in 1968.

Bobby is an ambitious ensemble piece set in the Ambassador hotel where Kennedy was shot. As it leads up to the momentous event, it encapsulates the socio-political landscape of the time through multiple subplots â€" stories of the Mexican kitchen workers, the Viet-Nam war dodger, a boozy show biz singer, the philandering hotel manager and so on.

Kennedy himself only appears in news footage, or glimpsed from behind, but it's particularly striking how articulate the man was and even accounting for the selective choice of newsreel, how much his appeal crossed social and ethnic divides.

The 22 characters are played by a veritable galaxy of stars including Charlie Sheen, Anthony Hopkins, Laurence Fishburne, Helen Hunt, Demi Moore, Sharon Stone, Elijah Wood, to name a few. Some of the dialogue is creaky, painfully so at times, and the sprawling nature of the multiple storylines means the film can seem sluggish and disconnected. But while Bobby doesn't quite come off, it has an undeniable final impact.