Perhaps there is no bigger swing in Beatty’s career than Bulworth. Now of course scope wise one does have to give all credit where credit is due to Reds, but there is something about the blind faith in the concept and the baffling amount of complexity and lack of subtlety that Beatty brought to his political satire Bulworth that can’t help make it one of the more entertaining films in his cannon as a director – even if it is not in any way one of his most successful pieces. 

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One in a way doesn’t exactly know where to start. This film is at once a discussion on race and politics in America, it’s at other times a darkly comedic fish out of water story, it’s at other times an attempt at the Network formula of a man of great power and persuasion snapping and finally telling the truth and becoming only more popular because of it, all bumbled and fumbled together into a screenplay written by Beatty with Jeffrey Pikser from a story by Beatty that would go on to be nominated but lose the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay. Incredibly this is what the IMDB plot summary reads; “A suicidally dillusioned liberal politician puts a contract out on himself and takes the opportunity to be blunt honest with his voters by affecting the rhythms and speech of hip-hop music and culture”. The ideas are there, as a matter of fact the film overflows with ideas ranging from the interesting to the painfully tone deaf. As a matter of fact this may be one of the most oddly problematic films I’ve seen in a while, I say “oddly” as of course all intentions are in the right place, whether that makes it better or worse is ultimately up to each viewer. Beatty as the titular politician Bulworth begins as an almost comically suicidal individual, completely disillusioned and dead to the world of politics. Some of the film’s most genuinely successful work is in these early scenes with the tired nature of himself and his team struggling through the final years of a career are presented with equal parts business-like moroseness and pained clinical politics – a very funny running joke in fact concerns the repetition of Bulworth’s go to phrase, “we are on the brink of a new millennium”. This phrase in a way colours the whole film. This is a film and a screenplay that does attempt and succeed then and again at being very much of it’s time. The film never shies away from very specific and timely references as long as they help solidify the political ideologies the film is presenting.  The film’s cinematography by Vittorio Storaro also offers a real almost verité style of film-making, which brings it even more into an immediacy, albeit at times making the film come off a little unintentionally cheap, which is even stranger with the film’s all-star cast of old and new faces, as well as even a few without dialogue starry cameos.

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So why does the film just fundamentally not work? The conceit is truly bizarre for one. A political pundit cracking up and beginning to tell the truth is a framing we have seen before, but never like this, never with a white liberal Warren Beatty figure slowly ingratiating himself into black 90’s hip-hop culture and eventually only being able to speak in rhymes. There is a version of this film where I could even see a dark comedy that works, where this overly white liberal figure dons the hip-hop clothes and beany and sunglasses, does begin rapping and the joke is on him and the black people in the film laugh and aren’t taken in by this blatant cultural appropriation in an attempt to speak to a large voting body. But no, in this film, everybody loves Bulworth. A bevy of talented black performers are in this film and vary from completely falling for Bulworth or eventually coming to his side of thinking. Don Cheadle for one begins as an antagonist to Bulworth, but by the end is by his side leading him and protecting him. Halle Berry as a co-lead romantic interest role even falls in love with him it seems. The film just time after time completely becomes laughable, every single time Beatty begins rapping after a weird vocal effect he makes of a tape rewinding, one just can’t help but begin to laugh. Cheadle’s great, Berry’s great and both of them along with everybody else are doing solid work with this abysmal script and in the end the film ends up an incredibly 90’s and truly bizzare piece of film, that is rarely successful, but sometimes undoubtedly effectively surprising in it’s narrative twists. Are these twists effecting because they are all often out of the blue and only heightening an already ridiculous plot? Oh, most certainly, but they are still affecting to some degree. Making all this even weirder is the balancing of Ennio Morricone’s truly beautiful score with a constant rap soundtrack – it’s this bizarre combination of adding traditional cinematic drama to a tale as ridiculous as this that makes the line being drawn even more baffling. Beatty is clearly on the right side of things politically, but this is certainly the strangest piece of liberal media I’ve ever seen. Have I even mentioned that the film’s driving force is a shoddily presented hit-man sub-plot?

-        Thomas Carruthers