Review: RFK Must Die: The Assassination of Bobby Kennedy

You don’t have to be a 24 or X-Files junkie to believe in conspiracy theories. Arriving on our shores on the eve of a historic presidential election that may put an African-American with a compassionate Kennedyesque persona in the White House, RFK Must Die: The Assassination of Bobby Kennedy boldly expands on a 2006 article director Shane O’Sullivan wrote for The Guardian, showcasing the video and photographic evidence that led him to believe that three senior C.I.A. operatives may have been involved in Bobby Kennedy’s death. The film suffers from O’Sullivan’s obvious keenness for this theory, mostly throughout discussion of the girl in the infamous “polka-dot dress” and her possible connection to convicted assassin Sirhan Sirhan: He resurrects witnesses Sandra Serrano and Vincent DiPierro, drawing links between the LAPD and C.I.A. and suggesting the possibility of Sirhan having been a “Manchurian candidate,” but while he focuses on the thuggishness of the man who gave Serrano her polygraph test, he makes no mention of the polygraph results or DiPierro’s admission at the time that he may have been influenced by Serrano. (Sketchy stuff, especially when you consider the more thorough research others have done on this matter, but it’s tempting to cut O’Sullivan some slack, especially given that the film has been trimmed by almost 40 minutes since it premiered on video last November.)

O’Sullivan’s discussion of the possibility of there having been more than one shooter inside the kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel is better supported, not only by footage of a bullet-filled doorframe that was destroyed by the LAPD but also by eerie video and photographs of three men with links to both the C.I.A. and a one-of-a-kind base in Miami from which covert missions against Fidel Castro were orchestrated and where resentment against both RFK and JFK was rampant. Given the abuses of C.I.A. authority since the beginning of the Cold War and the agency’s noted involvement in the assassination of Che Guevara, O’Sullivan’s argument is not easily dismissed, especially when you consider the hesitancy and outright refusal of one of his less kookier taking heads to divulge his familiarity with the men caught on film slinking around the Ambassador Hotel on June 5, 1968 with military poise and scant shock on their faces. O’Sullivan’s propositions are compelling enough to make you think that the truth is still out there.