Set among the guests and staff at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles on the day in 1968 when presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy was murdered, "Bobby" is a sentimental love letter from writer-director Emilio Estevez to his hometown and the slain politician. A well-crafted piece with a large ensemble cast featuring some big names, the film's success will depend on whether audiences respond to its rose-tinted view of Los Angeles in the late 1960s and its clear belief that RFK was a saint.

With its strong liberal bias, the picture will appeal to nostalgic left-leaning audiences in the U.S. It might well prosper internationally as it presents a very different face of American politics from the one on offer from the current administration.

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.

"Bobby" features many clips showing RFK addressing campaign audiences and by the time he ran for president, he was certainly talking the talk. Its preamble also uses real footage to set the scene showing bombs falling in Vietnam, the march on Selma, President Johnson's resignation and the Cesar Chavez protests.

Estevez focuses, however, on the people at the Ambassador who include hotel fixture John Casey (Anthony Hopkins), who will reminisce about its glamorous history at every opportunity and always has time for a chess game in the lobby with his old pal Nelson (Harry Belafonte).

There's also hotel manager Paul (William H. Macy), who is married to Miriam (Sharon Stone) but having an affair with Angela (Heather Graham), one of the switchboard operators. Well liked and a committed Democrat, Paul fires the hotel's racist catering manager, Timmons (Christian Slater), after he declines to let his staff of blacks and Latinos off work to vote.

Estevez does a good job of cutting between many story elements that cover Kennedy's political team at work. In the kitchen, blacks and Latinos strive to get along. Guests include a businessman (Martin Sheen) and his self-conscious younger wife (Helen Hunt); a drunken singer (Demi Moore) and her unhappy husband (Estevez); a young woman (Lindsay Lohan), getting married to save her groom (Elijah Wood) from Vietnam; and a would-be actress (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), who works in the coffee shop and tries to help two very stoned Kennedy volunteers (Brian Geraghty and Shia LaBeouf), high on LSD purchased from a whacked-out dealer played by Ashton Kutcher.

The dialogue is heavy with aspiration and regret. Laurence Fishburn has a good scene lecturing on racial pragmatism. Hopkins and Belafonte reflect wryly on growing old, and so do Stone and Moore, though in a very different way.

Cultural references are used cleverly with Los Angeles Dodger Don Drysdale's effort to achieve six straight shutouts on everybody's mind, and people talking about such films as "The Graduate" and "Planet of the Apes."

Cinematographer Michael Barrett captures Patti Podesta's production design in expert fashion. Editor Richard Chew helps Estevez keep all the identities clear as the events of the day gather pace. Mark Isham's score is as expert as usual.

As the climax nears, Simon and Garfunkel's "The Sound of Silence" plays. 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.