Bulworth

Plot synopsis:
In March 1996, Democratic U.S. Senator Jay Bulworth of California is losing his bid for re-election to a fiery young populist. Bulworth's socialist views, formed in the 1960s and 1970s, have lost favor with voters, so he has conceded to more conservative politics and to accepting donations from big corporations. In addition, though he and his wife have been having affairs with each other's knowledge for years, they must still present a happy façade in the interest of maintaining a good public image.
Tired of politics, unhappy with his life in general, and planning to commit suicide, Bulworth negotiates a $10 million life insurance policy with his daughter as the beneficiary in exchange for a favorable vote from the insurance industry. Knowing that a suicide will void his daughter's inheritance, he contracts to have himself assassinated within two days.
Turning up in California for his campaign extremely drunk, Bulworth freely begins speaking his mind at public events and in the presence of the C-SPAN film crew following his campaign. After dancing all night in an underground club and smoking marijuana, he even starts rapping in public. His frank, potentially offensive remarks make him an instant media darling and re-energize his campaign. Along the way he becomes romantically involved with a young black activist named Nina, who tags along with him on his campaign stops. He is pursued by the paparazzi, his insurance company, his campaign managers and an increasingly adoring public, all the while fearful of his impending assassination.
After a televised debate during which Bulworth drinks from a flask on air and derides insurance companies and the American healthcare system, he decides to hide at Nina's family's home, located in the South Central Los Angeles ghetto. While there he wanders around the neighborhood, where he witnesses a group of kids selling crack, and buys the group ice cream. After saving the group from a racially motivated encounter with a police officer, he finds out they are "soldiers" of L.D., a local drug kingpin to whom Nina's brother owes money. Bulworth eventually makes it to a television appearance arranged earlier by his campaign manager, during which he raps and repeats verbatim statements Nina and L.D. have told him about the lives of poor black people and their opinions of various American institutions, like education and employment. Eventually he offers the solution that "everybody should fuck everybody" until everyone is "all the same color" stunning the audience and his interviewer.
After Bulworth's TV appearance (at the end of which one mysterious assassination attempt occurs) he escapes with Nina and goes with her back to her house where she reveals that she is the assassin he indirectly hired (ostensibly to make the money needed to pay off the debt her brother owes to L.D.) and will now not carry out the job. Relieved, Bulworth falls asleep for the first time in days in Nina's arms. Bulworth sleeps deeply for over 36 hours (with Nina tenderly watching over him), during which time the media is abuzz about his mysterious absence on election day. During this time, various people are shown reacting to the TV coverage and the impact Bulworth's escapade is making on the political/social conversation in the country (race, poverty, inequity, greed). Bulworth wins the primary election by a landslide.
The next morning the press and Bulworth's campaign managers converge on Nina's house, all eager to talk to him. L.D. also comes to Nina's house and, having had a change of heart, says he will let Nina's brother work off his debt instead of hurting or killing him. Bulworth emerges from the bedroom looking rested and, as he steps outside, he invites Nina to go with him; she eventually joins him, after some hesitation. Bulworth and Nina embrace and begin to kiss as people cheer. As Bulworth happily accepts a new campaign for the presidency, he is suddenly shot in front of the crowd of reporters and supporters by an agent of the insurance company lobbyists, who were fearful of Bulworth's recent push for single-payer health care.
Bulworth's fate is left ambiguous. The final scene shows an elderly vagrant, whom Bulworth met previously, standing alone outside a hospital. He exhorts Bulworth, who is presumably inside, to not be 'a ghost' but 'a spirit' which, as he had mentioned earlier, can only happen if you have 'a song'. In the final shot of the film, he asks the same of the audience.

Tags: romantic, comedy, satire, entertaining

Review:
Warren Beatty's Senator Jay Bulworth lays down the smack: the reason the working man (in this movie, the working class is cleverly disguised as hip-hop mavens) doesn't have a voice, is he doesn't have the sway or monetary bullocks to *buy* a voice.
And of course, from the first instant, this divine fool's failure is certain and imminent: Big Business, what with its grimy fingers perpetually immersed in the U.S. Government's proverbial tub of crunchy Jif, would never allow a politician like Bulworth to succeed, at the risk of the working class' newfound capacity to leech the power from the insurance companies and tire manufacturers.Beneath the sometimes dark comedy, Bulworth has a lot of insightful and painful comments to may about our often hypocritical and ineffectual government.
You would hardly think that Warren Beatty as a depressed suicidal Senator having a nervous breakdown and suffering from sleep deprivation, taking on the ridiculous persona of an inner-city youth and parading it in front of the National News Media, could work as a piercing political satire.
This is Beatty's career best performance by far, making his rapidly breaking down liberal Democrat Senator into a character simultaneously howlingly funny, pitiable, admirable, wince inducing, pathetic and horrifying.
Beatty has made a film that walks the razor's edge right along with it's lead character, playing into deliberately provoking racial and cultural stereotypes at the same time it shreds them.
BULWORTH (1998) ***1/2Starring: Warren Beatty, Halle Berry, Don Cheadle, Oliver Platt, Isaiah Washington, and Christine Baranski Directed, produced, and written by Warren Beatty   108 minutes   Rated R (for pervasive strong language, drug use, sexual references, and brief violence) By Blake French:	I have seen a lot of movies in my time, but I have never seen anything as witty, as twisted, as entertaining, as outrageous, or as original as Warren Beatty's new political satire "Bulworth." It is, at times, funny, but at others very dark.
As the movie opens, a US senator named Jay Billington Bulworth, hires a hit man to kill an individual of his desire.
The performances in "Bulworth" entirely demonstrate that Warren Beatty is not only able to direct, write and produce well, but also that capable to lead an all star cast, including Don Cheadle, Oliver Platt, Isaiah Washington, and Christine Baranski, into an Oscar worthy overall appearance level.
Warren Beatty stars as a Seantor who is sick of all the lies and crap in Washington, so he takes out a life insurance policy and hires a hit-man to kill him.
Warren Beatty's Bulworth is one devastating satire on the political scene of the Clinton years.
Sad to say things really ain't gotten any better here.J. Billington Bulworth, Democratic Senator from California at one time rising liberal star has had to tack mighty heavily to the right in order to keep his office.
I think Bulworth provides some answers as to a possible direction MacKay might have taken.Warren Beatty wrote a witty script and a mean rap.
Warren Beatty is the director, writer, and star of Bulworth, a political black comedy in the tradition of Bob Roberts and the Contender.
Bulworth is a former Kennedy liberal (like Beatty himself), an incumbent senator from California who is charged by an opponent as being "old liberal wine trying to pour himself into a new conservative bottle." The humor to Bulworth is that liberal and conservative, Democrat and Republican, are no longer monikers that signify much, an illusion that has become an ever-deepening divide in the two parties since this film's release: Nevertheless, when it comes to national health care, for instance, the insurance companies have had both parties at their beck and call.Bulworth is done for.
Beatty tarries very close to home, and in the tone of the film as well as its Clinton-era contemporaries like Wag the Dog and Primary Colors, it epitomizes political problems in the US that since their time have grown into much different, much uglier problems.
I think that regardless of your political leanings, it's hard to not at least find 1998's "Bulworth" appealing because of the simple fact that the movie succeeds, because, to me, in all instances, it shouldn't have.
Any movie that features a middle-aged (star Warren Beatty was 61 in '98) Democratic senator who's running for reelection and uses raps to voice his views to his constituents gets an automatic "A" in my book.I must confess my love for hip-hop and its fusion with politics, as attributed to such (in)famous landmark rap groups like Public Enemy or Boogie Down Productions, and Beatty's raps seem so improvised you'd think he'd have a career as a rapper.
In "Bulworth," the film (and Beatty) show us the dark underside to American politics - it exposes the lies, the corruption, and seemingly lack of morality apparent on all political fronts.
In desperation and at one last attempt to lend weight and meaning to his hapless existence as he embarks on a whirlwind reelection campaign, he puts a contract out on his own life, a weekend "research project" is what it's called.I've not heard of many politicians who would dare say and do some of the things that I see Bulworth do in this film.
How many times can a speech start out the same way, "We stand at the doorstep of a new millennium..." Beatty is amazing with this movie and especially with its script (co-authored by himself and Jeremy Pisker), which got an Oscar nomination in 1998.Bulworth stuns his colleagues and the masses with his radical new views (many of which, are in fact, Beatty's own).
His top political adviser Dennis Murphy (Oliver Platt) is shocked greatest of all as he's left to frantically pick up the pieces of Bulworth's rampage and try to save his own job, his wife (who throws the cameras the best phony smile I've ever seen from a politician's spouse) climbs into the bed of another man, and Bulworth eventually finds love and comfort with Nina (Halle Berry), an inner-city L.A. activist.Bulworth starts to dress-down the part of the rapping, rhyming politician who speaks the blunt truth about our American system of politics, especially with regards to the African-American community, about how the Democratic Party doesn't really care about blacks and how the Republicans are screwing us over in their pitiful attempts at trying to relate to our problems by exploiting us."Bulworth" is an extremely vulgar and laugh-out loud satire that breaks the rules at every corner.
Beatty is excellent in a comical and certainly inspired performance that defies standard Hollywood conventions; Bulworth's greatest muse are his constituents, who come to include an inner-city tough (Don Cheadle) and his "soldiers." His script (and this film) in general, are one of the most original pieces of political satire I've seen in recent years.In the aftermath of the 2004 election, you would think that a movie like "Bulworth" will turn heads everywhere, on both sides.
Warren Beatty probably gives the best experience of his career.Halle Berry has only a supporting role in reality BUT she does have a political oriented speech that is one of the most outstanding speech ever given on the big screen, when it comes to class oriented views.
Though many people probably share a lot of the same viewpoints expressed in the film, it probably took someone of Warren Beatty's clout to actually sit down and write it all out, then believably pitch it to a studio.
Some scenes are terrific, others just terrible trash.Halle Berry plays anything but a likable lead, nor are the characters people you can root for, except for Oliver Platt in the first half of the film.
Underlying the ironic and frequently laugh-out-loud humor is a message that Warren Beatty seems comfortable delivering -- "Our destinies may be in the hands of Big Business and Big Government, but that doesn't mean that we can't get out and enjoy life, and maybe even take a shot at improving those destinies." As I watched the end credits of "Bulworth," I remembered that I'd sat in the theater and felt mesmerized as I watched the end credits of the other two Beatty films.
Considering many of the negative comments I've read about "Bulworth" on IMDB, I'm left to wonder whether this is a great film or whether it helps to have a liberal bias to enjoy Beatty's filmmaking..
I was expecting great things from this film from the trailers which advertised Beatty speaking the truth to a black congregation.
And if white people would only dress like crack-dealers, snort cocaine and rap their way through life, they'd endear themselves into the hearts of black Americans everywhere.As someone who lives in the inner-city and faces its rigors on a daily basis, I must say that Warren Beatty has unintentionally managed to illustrate exactly what a "limosine liberal" he really is -- stereotyping blacks and whites while trying to prove how "with it" an old, rich, white guy from Beverly Hills can really be..
Besides his broadsides against such things as the insurance industry, he takes a totally insulting slap at Jews, charging them with ruining the entertainment industry.As a medium for his message, Beatty/Bulworth decides to embrace African-American culture.
He plays the title character, a right-wing senator who has a breakdown and starts singing rap songs that tell the truth about politics and the status of the black community.
I guess that this sort of thing could only come from Warren Beatty (most recently, he and Rob Reiner successfully encouraged California's voters to reject Arnold Schwarzenegger's proposals).All in all, "Bulworth" is a great movie.
He a) falls in love with a random woman named Nina (Halle Berry), b) has to find out who was going to kill him so he can stop it, c) continue his new, successful campaign of honesty, and d) rap everything he says.Before watching Bulworth, I was worried.
Beatty makes his usual director/producer/writer (his script got well deserved Oscar nomination)/actor routine, but it is better than usual.Here, Beatty plays a overly-depressed senator who decides to pay a guy to hire a guy to kill him (and someone will get a lot of life insurance afterwards), but before that happens, he decides to go to South central, California to start speaking the truth people want ot hear (in rap form, literally).
We know that Jay Bulworth (Beatty) has hired a hit man to end his troubles.
I recommend Tim Robbin's movie Bob Roberts if you'd like a political satire that is actually funny and not just insulting..
Having seen the trailer for the movie, I thought it would be a farcical romp through the political system we know today.However, it turned out to be another "message from Hollywood," in celluloid form.Feeling freed from the shackles of political correctness, and doomed to a death he himself planned (another glamorization by Hollywood about how to handle life, I guess), we have a politician (Beatty) speaking out against the political system he exists in.So far so good?!?!?!Then it gets really ridiculous.
Does Warren Beatty think there's anybody on the planet that doesn't know that already?I can't understand why this dull film is so highly recommended other than the reputation of the filmmaker and his alleged high-powered political satire..
"Bulworth" is another high-profile political satire that came out in 1998 that should have been on fire due to its pedigree and instead comes off as rather limp.Warren Beatty plays an end-of-his-rope politician who goes a little off his rocker and begins to speak the truth to the people, often by rapping it to them hip-hop fashion.
Bulworth (1998) *** 1/2 (out of 4) Warren Beatty wrote, produced, directed and stars in this political satire about Sentaor Bulworth who days before the election puts a hit out on his own life due to his depression.
BULWORTH was pretty controversial when it was first released and it seemed like the studio didn't want anyone to know it was out but I remember feeling it was an incredibly fresh and rather honest movie.
I think you have to give Beatty all the credit in the world for doing a film like this because you know so many people would be offended by it.
Still, BULWORTH is a very sharp and very funny look at politics and Beatty really does give it his all..
And although they state, by way of Warren Beatty's pen, many pretty heart-breaking truths about our political situation, it was a film that certainly captured my attention.
The rest of us see a movie full of grossly exaggerated characters and story twists that are so implausible that it robs the film of any claim to making a serious political statement.
Political social commentary can also be good fun, as Beatty proves with this film.
Beatty's character spends the whole movie complaining about the awful bureaucracy of American politics, but the best solution he could come up with was "taking a little away from the rich and giving it to the poor" and implementing "socialized medicine," like the Canadians.
socialism doesn't WORK, Mr. Beatty...a little bit of racism in American politics ain't NOTHIN' compared the corruption you find in Communist governments.]Surprisingly, I was able to tolerate the white-guy-rapping thing, because if some whacked-out middle-aged politician was to do what Beatty's character does in the film, his rapping probably wouldn't be much better.Bulworth had its moments, but overall, though, I have to give it a barely-passing grade.Lets not forget that the film inadvertently stereotypes blacks, even though one of its major themes is the elimation of racism...this is a very BAD thing when it comes to films :-\In the end, Bulworth is a disappointing, failed attempted at a preachy love story with a terribly unsatisfying plot.Pass on this one..
The film depicts no good reasons for his character to be depressed, or to be so deeply interested in black culture - either of which would have added credibility to the movie overall.The next clue that this is just Beatty having a mid-life crisis in real life, and therefore wanting to make something "artsy" and "with a message" is the lighting in this film.
As another writer in this forum commented, there is an incredible amount of racism surrounding the filmmaking - the stereotypical clothing, the only really desirable female is the one who is so light-skinned she may as well be white - the others are only fun aunt-Jemima re-inventions; the ghetto drug dealer is so moved by Beatty's character that he decides to lead a neighborhood clean-up - what a waste of some of these talented cast members' acting abilities!Beatty is the center of every scene, always acting drugged out and messed up, rapping it "like it is" to the delight of all of the supposedly down-to-earth people, and to the shock but benign spetatorship of all the "suits."This film could have been a poignant farce into today's political climate - a treat that is ever so lacking in such a good economy.
Warren Beatty did an astonishing job in this film, a little too good now that I think of it.
It truly was one of the most ingenious movies ever to be created, and the fact that they got Warren Beatty to rap through the whole thing, that was a hoot.
I did not laugh when I saw Bulworth (in fact cringed is more like it) and while it is not easy to explain why, I'll give it a shot.This film begins with a politician dealing with depression and suicidal thoughts.
But the cliches get much worse for Bulworth as it continues the time honored tradition of the 60 something actor falling for the 20 something love interest.Last but not least Warren Beatty throws us one more, out of date, 60's liberal message.
Several times I thought, can't a fine actress like Halle Berry, who is as good as anyone could be in a film like this, find a better picture?In fairness, Beatty seems to have targeted his movie to the under 30 audience and probably doesn't care much what "mature" viewers think.
The love-story sub-plot is perhaps the least successful component (Halle Berry is not entirely convincing)--and the film very nearly shoots itself in the foot near the end--but, overall, this is a very satisfying and stirring movie-going experience (even on video).I would recommend Bulworth to everyone--especially those who have pre-conceived notions about it.
The protagonist in the film - Senator Bulworth - played by Warren Beatty in the role of his lifetime, falls in love with a young woman played by Halle Berry, the most beautiful woman ever to grace Hollywood (next to Ingrid Bergman) and  who, incidentally, is half white.
Right now I love Warren Beatty, I just hope that he can make a movie nearly as good as this one again.
I think Warren Beatty did a masterful job of embedding some very serious commentary on our society's social, political, and economic conditions in an extremely funny movie.
Warren Beatty co-wrote, co-produced, directed, and was the star in this political satire/ comedy.
Warren Beatty once again proves he has no idea when it comes to producing truly effective satire in this woeful display of over acting and inept scripting.The film fails on all counts.
It remains neither an effective satire on political America or a comedy of any subtlety or finesse.This film is complete and utter rubbish and one of the few I have seriously thought of working out on since I began my movie viewing life..
Warren Beatty is the title character, a California senator who lets it all hang out during what he has paid a hit man to ensure is his last weekend on earth.The senator's sudden carefree attitude is the key theme of BULWORTH, and offers the film's biggest laughs.
To experience Bulworth, is to experience one of the more bizarre films to come out of Hollywood in recent times, as it features Warren Beatty as a rapping politician, who while on the political trail, insults minorities and takes a satirical stab at American politics in the process.