Bulworth
Warren Beatty was always one of the strangest of his kind in Hollywood history, a handsome ladies man movie star who at the same time was in many ways a totally eccentric freak. This 1998 release (the last major film he did before going into exile) tries (and nearly succeeds at times) to be an outrageous off the wall political satire but ultimately settles into being an everlasting paean to that most underrated form of racism known as White Guilt. Beatty stars as Jay Bulworth, a once liberal Democratic Senator who, through shady backroom deals with big businesses, has now actually become more conservative than his heart can bear, which leads to him not eating or sleeping for three days and finally hiring a hitman to take himself out during his final campaign swing before the primaries. Once he’s out on the road, Bulworth figures he’s got nothing to lose now and decides to tell the harsh truth to people, including making racist remarks to an all-black church and insulting some Hollywood jews with anti-semitic remarks while also telling them that their movies are terrible (er..). Eventually his psychotic episode becomes so pronounced that he starts talking in rhyme, and soon starts out-right rapping his mostly Socialist views while the rich and powerful who have supported him for years sit there and fume. During this time he picks up some black female groupies as well, including an exceptional one played by Halle Berry whom he obviously wants to get with, all the while looking over his shoulder thinking that the assassin that he himself hired is gonna get him sooner rather than later. Admittedly not all of this is as bad as it sounds, and the first half is certainly better (and funnier) than the second, with some actual hilarious moments including having the lily-white Bulworth spend an entire night partying and dancing in an all-black bar. The mistake that the film makes as it goes on is that while Bulworth’s life and career careen out of control due to his psychotic behavior, he actually starts becoming an INSPIRATION to the black community, since Beatty’s script states at several times that “all black leaders end up being killed”, and thus Bulworth becomes a sort of insane messiah for the disenfranchised black community, even going so far as to stay with Berry’s family and donning sagging shorts and other hip-hop gear in order to fit in. As for the rest of the cast, Berry is certainly a hot ghetto princess, even when she mouths some platitudes to show that she is really an activist type; Sean Astin has a nothing role as a cameraman following Bulworth around who ultimately finds himself attracted to one of Berry’s girlfriends; Don Cheadle plays a drug dealer who is so low that he uses underage kids to sell his product, yet becomes so inspired by Bulworth’s “message” that he decides to switch gears and become a community organizer, and worse, is saddled with a speech which is a composite of every clichéd excuse that black people have made for their own failures in order to justify why he sells drugs; Paul Sorvino gives some serious slow burns as the racist lobbyist for the insurance companies; and Oliver Platt at least redeems things a little as Bulworth’s increasingly exasperated chief of staff who ultimately resorts to sniffing coke to deal with the stress his boss has heaped upon him. It all ends up with Bulworth doing a live cable news appearance where he quickly cuts the interviewer off and does a mad, obscenity-laced rant about the evil corporations and health insurance companies and how they should spread the wealth, and also going on and on about the struggles black people face every day (with a small shout-out to white people for equal time), before concluding that all races should be destroyed by having people of all colors “fuck until everyone looks the same”. Truly an embarrassment and having Bulworth become a national hero because of it instead of the political laughingstock he would be in real life pretty much smacks of arrogance on Beatty’s part. Seeing this film for the first time as a young man I thought much of what happened here was cute and funny, but now given the current reality of our political climate, to say that this is offensive would be an understatement. Overall, a movie that is just as much of a train wreck as its title character…
4/10