RFK (film)

Last updated

RFK
RFK (film).jpg
DVD cover
Genre Historical drama
Written by Hank Steinberg
Directed by Robert Dornhelm
Starring
Music by
Country of originUnited States
Original languageEnglish
Production
Executive producers
  • Robert Cooper
  • Tom Patricia
ProducerMark Winemaker
CinematographyDerick V. Underschultz
EditorVictor Du Bois
Running time94 minutes
Production companies
Original release
Network FX
ReleaseAugust 25, 2002 (2002-08-25)

RFK is a 2002 American biographical historical drama television film directed by Robert Dornhelm and written by Hank Steinberg. The film stars Linus Roache as Robert F. Kennedy. David Paymer, Martin Donovan, Jacob Vargas, Marnie McPhail, Sergio Di Zio, Sean Sullivan, Ving Rhames and James Cromwell also star. It premiered on the FX Network on August 25, 2002.

Contents

The film takes place through the eyes of RFK after his brother John F. Kennedy's assassination in 1963. [1] As he lives through the loss, he starts to identify himself as a political figure, not just the former president's brother. He makes it official with a 1968 United States presidential election bid in order, what he says, to "save the Democratic Party". [2] During his campaign, in which the American people showed great support for him, RFK was shot and killed by pro-Palestinian activist Sirhan Sirhan as a statement against Kennedy's unwavering support of Israel. [3]

The film was shot in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.

Cast

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Linus Roache</span> British actor (born 1964)

Linus William Roache is a British actor. He is known for playing Executive ADA Michael Cutter in the NBC dramas Law & Order (2008–2010) and Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (2011–2012). More notably, Roache played Ecbert, King of Wessex in Vikings from 2014 to 2017.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ethel Kennedy</span> American human rights campaigner (born 1928)

Ethel Kennedy is an American human rights advocate. She is the widow of U.S. senator Robert F. Kennedy, a sister-in-law of President John F. Kennedy, and the sixth child of George and Ann Skakel. Shortly after her husband's assassination in 1968, Kennedy founded the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights, a non-profit charity working to reach his goal of a just and peaceful world. In 2014, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama. She is the oldest living member of the Kennedy family.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Robert F. Kennedy Jr.</span> American attorney and activist (born 1954)

Robert Francis Kennedy Jr., also known by his initials RFK Jr., is an American politician, environmental lawyer, anti-vaccine activist, and conspiracy theorist. He is the chairman and founder of Children's Health Defense, an anti-vaccine advocacy group that is a leading proponent of COVID-19 vaccine misinformation. He was an independent candidate in the 2024 United States presidential election. A member of the Kennedy family, he is a son of the U.S. attorney general and senator Robert F. Kennedy, and a nephew of the U.S. president John F. Kennedy and senator Ted Kennedy.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kennedy curse</span> Premature deaths and calamities for Kennedy family

The Kennedy curse is a series of deaths, accidents, assassinations, and other calamities involving members of the American Kennedy family. The alleged curse has primarily struck the descendants of businessman Joseph P. Kennedy Sr., but it has also affected family friends, associates, and other relatives. Political assassinations and plane crashes have been the most common manifestations of the "curse". Following the Chappaquiddick incident in 1969, Ted Kennedy is quoted saying he questioned if "some awful curse did actually hang over all the Kennedys." However skeptics argue that it is not improbable for a large extended family to experience similar events over the course of several generations.

<i>Sins of the Father</i> (2002 film) 2002 American TV series or program

Sins of the Father is a 2002 American crime drama television film directed by Robert Dornhelm and written by John Pielmeier. It is based on an article by Pamela Colloff published in the April 2000 issue of Texas Monthly, chronicling the 1963 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in Birmingham, Alabama, in which four young African-American girls were killed while attending Sunday school. The victims were Addie Mae Collins, 14 yrs old; Denise McNair, 11 yrs old; Carole Robertson, 14 yrs old; and Cynthia Welsley, 14 yrs old. It was believed that there were 5 girls together in the church basement on that fateful day, but only one survived: young Sarah Collins, Addie Mae's younger sister. The bombing was racially motivated and carried out by members of the Ku Klux Klan. The film was first aired on January 6, 2002 on FX.

<i>Bobby</i> (2006 film) 2006 film

Bobby is a 2006 American drama film written and directed by Emilio Estevez, and starring an ensemble cast featuring Harry Belafonte, Joy Bryant, Nick Cannon, Laurence Fishburne, Spencer Garrett, Helen Hunt, Joshua Jackson, Anthony Hopkins, Ashton Kutcher, Shia LaBeouf, Lindsay Lohan, William H. Macy, Demi Moore, Martin Sheen, Christian Slater, Sharon Stone, Freddy Rodriguez, Heather Graham, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Elijah Wood, and Estevez. The screenplay is a fictionalized account of the hours leading up to the June 5, 1968, shooting of U.S. Senator Robert F. Kennedy in the kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles following his win of the 1968 Democratic presidential primary in California.

The Robert F. Kennedy presidential campaign began on March 16, 1968, when Kennedy, a United States Senator from New York, mounted an unlikely challenge to incumbent Democratic United States President Lyndon B. Johnson. Following an upset in the New Hampshire primary, Johnson announced on March 31 that he would not seek re-election. Kennedy still faced two rival candidates for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination: the leading challenger United States Senator Eugene McCarthy and Vice President Hubert Humphrey. Humphrey had entered the race after Johnson's withdrawal, but Kennedy and McCarthy remained the main challengers to the policies of the Johnson administration. During the spring of 1968, Kennedy led a leading campaign in presidential primary elections throughout the United States. Kennedy's campaign was especially active in Indiana, Nebraska, Oregon, South Dakota, California, and Washington, D.C. After declaring victory in the California primary on June 4, 1968, Kennedy was assassinated at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. He died on June 6, 1968 at Good Samaritan Hospital. Had Kennedy been elected president, he would have been the first brother of a former U.S. president to win the presidency himself.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Robert F. Kennedy's speech on the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.</span> 1968 speech by U.S. Senator Robert F. Kennedy

On April 4, 1968, United States Senator Robert F. Kennedy of New York delivered an improvised speech several hours after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. Kennedy, who was campaigning to earn the Democratic Party's presidential nomination, made his remarks while in Indianapolis, Indiana, after speaking at two Indiana universities earlier in the day. Before boarding a plane to attend campaign rallies in Indianapolis, he learned that King had been shot in Memphis, Tennessee. Upon arrival, Kennedy was informed that King had died. His own brother, John Fitzgerald Kennedy had been assassinated on November 22, 1963. Robert F. Kennedy would be also assassinated two months after this speech, while campaigning for presidential nomination at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, California.

<i>RFK Must Die</i> 2007 British film

RFK Must Die: The Assassination of Bobby Kennedy is a 2007 investigative documentary by Irish writer and filmmaker Shane O'Sullivan. The film expands on O'Sullivan's earlier reports for BBC Newsnight and The Guardian and explores conspiracy theories related to the assassination of United States Senator Robert F. Kennedy on 5 June 1968. The title comes from a page of "free writing" found in assassin Sirhan Sirhan's notebook after the shooting upon which Sirhan had written "R.F.K. must die - RFK must be killed Robert F. Kennedy must be assassinated... before June 5 '68."

Sergio Di Zio is a Canadian actor. He starred in the television series Flashpoint as Michelangelo "Spike" Scarlatti until the show concluded on December 13, 2012. His other works include The Lookout, Cinderella Man, Senior Trip; the television series This is Wonderland, Northern Town; as a voice actor for the animated series Stoked and Babar and the Adventures of Badou. He also appeared in the stage debut of Léo written by Rosa Labordé for which he received a Dora Award nomination in 2006. Di Zio was recently part of an animated show called Grojband, until the show concluded in May 2015. He more recently has transitioned to short films, however he continues to take on various projects.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Assassination of Robert F. Kennedy</span> 1968 murder in Los Angeles, California, US

On June 5, 1968, Robert F. Kennedy was shot by Sirhan Sirhan at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, California, and pronounced dead the following day.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sirhan Sirhan</span> Assassin of Robert F. Kennedy (born 1944)

Sirhan Bishara Sirhan is a Palestinian-Jordanian man who was convicted of assassinating Senator Robert F. Kennedy Sr., a younger brother of American president John F. Kennedy and a candidate for the Democratic nomination in the 1968 United States presidential election. On June 5, 1968, Sirhan shot and mortally wounded Robert Kennedy, who died the next day. The circumstances surrounding the attack, which took place five years after his brother's assassination, have led to numerous conspiracy theories.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Robert F. Kennedy</span> American politician and lawyer (1925–1968)

Robert Francis Kennedy, also known by his initials RFK, was an American politician and lawyer. He served as the 64th United States attorney general from January 1961 to September 1964, and as a U.S. senator from New York from January 1965 until his assassination in June 1968, when he was running for the Democratic presidential nomination. Like his brothers John F. Kennedy and Ted Kennedy, he was a prominent member of the Democratic Party and is an icon of modern American liberalism.

Thomas Russell Jones, Jr. was an African-American member of the New York State Assembly, a justice of the New York Supreme Court, and a leading civil rights activist for black Americans in slums of Northern cities.

Matthew Maxwell Taylor Kennedy is an American lawyer and author. He is the ninth child of Robert F. Kennedy and Ethel Skakel Kennedy.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility</span> Prison near San Diego, California

Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility (RJD) is a California state prison in unincorporated southern San Diego County, California, near San Diego. It is a part of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. The facility sits on 780 acres (320 ha). It is the only state prison in San Diego County.

There are several non-standard accounts of Robert F. Kennedy's assassination, which took place shortly after midnight on June 5, 1968, in Los Angeles, California. Kennedy was assassinated at the Ambassador Hotel, during celebrations following his successful campaign in California's primary elections as a leading 1968 Democratic presidential candidate; he died the following day at Good Samaritan Hospital.

Robert F. Kennedy visited the British Mandate of Palestine in 1948, one month before Israel’s Declaration of Independence. Twenty-two years old at the time, he was reporting on the tense situation in the region for The Boston Post. During his stay, he grew to admire the Jewish inhabitants of the area. He later became a strong supporter of Israel; this was later cited as Sirhan Sirhan's alleged motivation for assassinating him on the first anniversary of the start of the Six-Day War on June 5, 1968. Sirhan happened to see a documentary about Kennedy in Palestine in 1948. Later in his murder trial, Sirhan Sirhan testified: "I hoped he will win Presidency until that moment. But when I saw, heard, he was supporting Israel, sir, not in 1968, but he was supporting, it from all the way from its inception in 1948, sir ..." Author Robert Blair Kaiser points out a discrepancy in the timing of Sirhan's decision. In Sirhan's diary, the entry in which he decided to kill Robert Kennedy was made on May 18. The documentary in question was first shown on TV in the Los Angeles area on May 20. When asked to explain, Sirhan said that he did not recall writing the journal.

Marnie McPhail Diamond is an American-born Canadian actress and musician. She began her career starring as Annie Edison in the CBC Television children's series The Edison Twins (1984–1986). She later moved to United States for starring in the daytime soap operas Generations and Days of Our Lives, guest-starred in a number of prime time series, made-for-television movies and feature films most notable playing Lieutenant Eiger in Star Trek: First Contact (1996). She later starred in the Canadian legal drama The Associates (2001–02) and the animated sitcoms Braceface (2001–04) and JoJo's Circus (2003–06).

Robert F. Kennedy, the 64th United States Attorney General, a U.S. senator from New York, and the brother of United States president John F. Kennedy, has frequently been depicted or referenced in works of popular culture.

References

  1. "RFK". tvguide.com. Retrieved January 21, 2023.
  2. "RFK". variety.com. August 20, 2002.
  3. "RFK is a 2002 American TV movie". tvtropes.org. August 25, 2002.
  4. "RFK 2002 Directed by Robert Dornhelm". letterboxd.com. Retrieved January 21, 2023.