The demands were not met and the three diplomats were executed on direct orders from Arafat – the same Arafat who received the Nobel Peace Prize, was received as a king at the United Nations and with whom American presidents subsequently dined.
The film, by the way, got a seven-minute standing ovation at the Venice Film Festival and has been nominated for many awards.
So what am I saying? Mainly that slick action techniques, great actors, and “relevant” subject matter cannot substitute for the facts, or for a cogent analysis of them. “Bobby” pretends to a political significance it does not have. People come away feeling they have just relived an important moment in American history when in fact they’ve been fed a series of well-acted fairy tales, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
