Bulworth [Region 2] (1998)

The beginning, in Washington, is depressive and real funny in the same time: Bulworth cries but he does it watching his own hypocrisy on the screen ('We stand on the doorstep of a new millenium...'). His marriage is a complete failure. Tired and desperate by his own life, disgusted by the empty, senseless and lying speeches prepared for him, he decides to get over all of this and puts a contract on... himself. Then he starts his campaign and arrives in L.A., first in South Central, the Black ghetto, and falls in love with a real beauty (Halle Berry, lately 'Academy-awarded'). He comes back to life and tries to cancel the 'research' he'd started but his contact has a heart attack...

This very funny and inventive story was original enough for having being nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay in 1998, along with "Saving Private Ryan", "Life is beautiful" and "Shakespeare in Love". The film gives us many great and raving moments, especially that meeting that degenerates into a rap and hip-hop concert, and that broadcasted, hilarating, angry interview ('Obscenity?'). The soundtrack, 'rappy' and agressive (Dr. Dre, Ice Cube...), is quite unusual in a Hollywood great production, even if it mixes with Ennio Morricone's lyrical, superb partitions (what a great idea!) and with the usual political musical stuff.

On the whole, Beatty makes us laugh as he shoots everything, especially the hard cynicism of the American political and business circles, showing the social and ecological failure of the system ('As long as we can drive a car, the whole planet can die'). He uses comedy and rap music - of course he (maybe) doesn't rap great, Mr. Kelly, but don't forget he's sixty! At his age, he makes a brilliant performance - to get his message through. And he does it so well, with so much strength that the movie was released with no rush and partly censored by the very studio which financed it. In Paris and suburbs, the movie was screened in only six theaters.

But Bulworth doesn't care. He made it.

Help other customers find the most helpful reviews   Was this review helpful to you?

Report this | Permalink Comment Comment

Bulworth may have been the most singularly eccentric big budget movie of 1998. It's about a politician, but whereas Primary Colors stayed within a defined framework, Bulworth is all over the map. Yet, depending on your sense of humor, it may be the funniest political satire you will see for some time to come.

Beatty is Jay Billington Bulworth, a United States senator from California who is up for yet another term. The time is 1996. As the movie notes, Clinton is running unopposed, and Dole is definitely going to get the Republican nomination. The public is unaroused, which means that the political climate is completely status quo. Meanwhile, Bulworth is about to have one heck of a nervous breakdown.

The reason Bulworth goes bananas is never specifically stated, but the implication is that the games, deceptions and deceits that make up modern politics have finally undone him. In deep despair, he gets ten million dollars worth of life insurance and promptly arranges for his own assassination. The next day, he changes his mind. He spends the rest of the moving running both for office and for his life.

He goes to fund raisers and insults his wealthy backers. He attends a church in Compton and tells his black audience that they are never going to get any help from Washington, because lower income people are only exploited by the big businesses that pay to get politicians elected. He becomes outrageously incorrect politically. The media, of course, always looking for a hot story, embraces him.

There's that hit man to be avoided. We see groups of reporters following Bulworth, who hasn't slept in days. A car backfires. Bulworth starts walking very fast, and then breaks into a run. The reporters run after him. This is a visual sight gag that is hysterical. Sometimes, he makes a getaway by driving off in his big black limo. Such a vehicle looks ridiculous in a chase scene, to say the least.

Beneath the sometimes dark comedy, Bulworth has a lot of insightful and painful comments to may about our often hypocritical and ineffectual government. These observations are made satirically, but effectively. This is not a heavy-handed work.

One thing that hampered Bulworth at the boxoffice was its portrayal of the man in the black community. People didn't get it. They were offended, especially many liberal white people. Beatty was in no way making fun of African-Americans by showing a very streetwise group. His point, which I thought was fairly obvious, was that many people will behave in an antisocial way in a society that is largely indifferent and often hostile towards them. I think that's almost a no-brainer. Bulworth is that rare politician who has soul.

I have never been fond of politics, perhaps because I grew up around a lot of good old boy politicians. I have always enjoyed movies about politics, because they are almost invariably cynical. From 1939's classic Mr. Smith Goes to Washington to Bulworth, Hollywood has shown that the American people are wise to what really goes on. Why we do nothing about it is another question.

Help other customers find the most helpful reviews   Was this review helpful to you?

Report this | Permalink Comment Comment

"Bulworth" is about a politician whose failed personal life and hypocritical political one compels him to kill himself. He puts a contract out on his life and while he's waiting to be knocked off he's suddenly free to say whatever he wants.

And so he does. During a 72-hour insomnia marathon, Bulworth ditches his canned speeches, and sound bites and instead says what's really on his mind. He tells a black church that he doesn't really care about their vote because they are black. He tells a Jewish group that you can't run for office without appeasing the Jews. He drinks whiskey during a political debate and explains to the camera that he doesn't care. Sound like Jack Nicholoson is running for office? Not exactly. Bullworth also falls in love with a black woman and becomes exposed to a different world of rap clubs, armed kids selling drugs, and police brutality.

I can understand where a lot of reviewers got turned off here. Yes, the black gang leader and white racist cops are stereotypes. And yes, Bulworth's journey into this world is just too smooth and easy. But to the film's credit, real issues of racism, crime, and poverty are handled in a blunt unsentimental fashion that somehow avoids the in-your-face brutality that often comes with realism. When Bulworth intervenes to prevent youthful drug sellers from being bullied by the police his actions and motive come from practical benevolence instead of a self-righteous crusade.

One of the funniest and most powerful moments of the film occurs when Bulworth asks the armed prepubescent drug sellers "shouldn't you be eating ice cream instead of being out here?" In the next scene, Bulworth buys the kids-guns and all-ice cream cones. The film is telling us in the simplest and least didactic manner that these are just kids. They should be leading a normal child's life, not a life of crime.

Bulworth's relationship with various characters and the events that transpire are unbelievable to a large degree, but this isn't a documentary. It's a film that exposes a problem and raises questions about how to solve it. The problem is political hypocrisy. All of the politicians who are driven by corporate money and surveys have no interest in solving real problems. At the same time, the excuse of the crime boss, that at least he's providing children with some degree of wealth by employing them to sell drugs is exposed for the self-serving lie that it is.

At the end of the film, Bulworth doesn't save the world and things don't magically work out. Once he comes down from his insomnia and manic speech acts he has to face the world as an uniformed politician again. But his transformation is real. As he leaves the black woman's house looking almost ashamed to be there he turns and asks "are you coming?" Then he explains that he loves her but he's insecure about being White. He isn't' a superman whose been transformed by his experiences, but he has grown and one senses that whatever he does it will be a meaningful compromise between the sellout politics of his past and the shock value activities of his recent experiences. The black crime boss must also compromise if he is to truly change things in his neighborhood for the better. In order to make meaningful changes in his community, he must maintain his ruthless reputation to some degree, but now he dose so as a self-conscious facade.

I agree that Warren Beaty's rapping was sub par, but who cares? "Bulworth" makes a powerful statement that in order to transcend problems of crime, poverty, racism, and political corruption we are going to have to take a cold hard look at who we really are and what is really happening around us. Accepting other people--particularly from different racial and economic backgrounds--has to be more than just an insincere speech act. It must be an act of good will that is grounded in practical reality.

Help other customers find the most helpful reviews   Was this review helpful to you?

Report this | Permalink Comment Comment