Bulworth (1998)

reviewed by
Rick Ferguson


BULWORTH

Starring Warren Beatty, Halle Berry and Oliver Platt

Written by Warren Beatty and Jeremy Pikser

Directed by Warren Beatty

Watching BULWORTH was an educational experience. I learned a new slang term: nappy dugout. If you don't know what a nappy dugout is, then I'm not going to tell you - I try to keep FILMGEEK a family site, more or less, and I sure don't want to be responsible for some 6th-grader running around telling his friends what a nappy dugout is. But I hadn't heard it before, and I thought it was pretty funny. BULWORTH is full of such surprising moments - surprising because you don't necessarily expect this level of energy in a film written and directed by a sixty-something actor like Beatty. Check out the recent films of Beatty contemporaries Clint Eastwood and Paul Newman, and you'll see what I mean; you could show some of these pictures in the Geriatric ward and you wouldn't even roust the old folks from their checkers games. But BULWORTH moves. It's far from a perfect film, but it's sharp, witty and has something to say - three elements that most of the pictures released this year have been sorely lacking.

Here's the story. California Senator Jay Bulworth (Beatty) is at the end of his rope. A career politician, he finds himself in the middle of his latest re-election campaign without hope or moral compass. He's a slave to the big insurance companies who finance his campaigns. His liberal idealism has long since succumbed to the choking rhetoric of Washington which he is forced to spout ad nauseam to keep his place at the Federal feed trough. Even his marriage is a sham. Despondent, Bulworth makes one last, desperate attempt to break free: he takes out a contract on his own life. Beats going to work in the private sector, one supposes.

But then something odd happens. Bulworth finds his self-imposed death sentence strangely liberating. Fueled by delirium brought on by a lack of sleep, he spends his next few campaign stops saying exactly what's on his mind. To a congregation of black churchgoers: "If you don't put down the malt liquor and the chicken wings and get behind somebody other than a running back who stabs his wife, you'll never get rid of somebody like me." To a gathering of big-money Hollywood Jews: "Your pictures really aren't very good, are they?" And so it goes, until Bulworth has drawn the attention of the national media and sent his campaign manager Dennis (Oliver Platt) into a cocaine-induced panic. He picks up three young black women at the church, including Nina (Halle Berry), who seems to take a special interest in him. He parties with them at an underground nightclub, where he discovers rap music. The next day, he starts rapping his message instead of giving speeches. Suddenly he's a hip-hopping, straight-talking sensation, and life is fun again. But that pesky hit man is still out there somewhere.

BULWORTH's first act is nothing short of sensational. As actor, writer and director, Beatty is in full command; the dialogue is crisp and arresting, the story moves swiftly and the performances by Beatty, Berry and Platt are right on the money. Those of you who thought WAG THE DOG was a good satire should put it up against the first thirty minutes of this picture and admit the error of your ways. For a short time, it looks as if Beatty is really going to break through with an important film. It takes a lot of guts to use studio money to convey the awful truth about American politics: that because the same five or six multi-national corporations who funnel all the money into political campaigns control not only the means of production in this country, but also the media outlets which purport to give us an impartial dissemination of the facts, American democracy has become simply another mindless diversion designed to give us the illusion of freedom. Makes you proud to be alive, doesn't it?

Unfortunately, BULWORTH doesn't sustain the same level of brilliance throughout. The story literally gets sidetracked in Watts. On the lam from the hit man, Bulworth hides out with Nina in her family's home, where he gets a good dose of quality black family life. He befriends some grade-school drug dealers and confronts their supplier L.D., played by BOOGIE NIGHTS alumnus Don Cheadle. Suddenly it seems as if Beatty has wandered into another film entirely. By the time the press finds him and the political theme gets going again, it's too late; the picture's over, and we're left with some fuzzy notions about the inherent good of the inner city versus the unrepentant evil of big business. Yadda yadda yadda, we've all seen this before.

But for a while, at least, BULWORTH is daring and brilliant. I wish Beatty had honed in on his message, had hammered on it until audiences left the theater screaming for blood. Film has that power. It's true that if a politician who spoke the truth like Bulworth ever actually came along, he'd most likely be ignored. These are boom times, after all, and as long as there are SUVs to lease and mutual funds to dabble in, we're not likely to pay much attention to what goes on over our heads. But the good times won't last forever. HMO's, banks, media companies, even manufacturers are gobbling up one another in an orgy of unbridled capitalism. Every day we have a little less control over our lives than we did the day before. BULWORTH could have been a warning sign, a harbinger of doom or a prophetic look at the abyss of the 21st century. It settled for being just a decent little film which, while enjoyable, will ultimately have no impact. Oh well - at least I can amuse my friends at parties with my new vulgar slang terms.

GRADE: B


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