Bulworth

An impossible feat to pull off, this film is remarkable in its audacious use of Rap rhythms and in your face farce that is a wonder to behold. There is literally nothing like this in moviedom. An over the top take on class war and politics that is amazingly fresh. 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. But it does, and it is a devastating delivery of an unbridled, out of the box, stream of consciousness conviction of a world gone mad. This is probably too pretentious and pandering for anyone but the far left to tolerate. However, even years later it is timeless, and you cannot deny that it is a mind-numbing movie that is entertaining and one must wonder, just how they made it happen. But here it is.

source: Bulworth

My son and I maintain a top 10 movie list according to our own tastes. We have never done a bottom 10 movie list but if I were to construct one, it would fall in the worst 4-5 I have ever seen. The language is offensive and his character is obnoxious and totally beyond empathy. The Black nightclub scene seemed interminable. We couldn't stand to watch the whole thing and fast forwarded to the end to see what happened. The hand pointing to the empty roof was a cutesy reproduction of a historic event. The ending was appropriate and not without pleasure. I expected to like it, already knowing the premise, but I think only radical Warren Beatty fans would find it entertaining.

Other than a few forced silly moments, this is the sharpest, darkest, bravest. most disturbing political satire out of Hollywood since "Network". 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. This isn't a polite "the system needs fixing" movie, it's an in-your-face scream that the system is broken, perhaps beyond all repair. That idea seems only more timely now.

That is seriously messed up. I had no idea that cheating on your spouse was such a positive thing, as long as your spouse is white, and the person you cheat with is black. Not to mention the tired old nonsense about how Insurance companies are making healthcare expensive and blah, blah, blah…..look at how absurdly expensive healthcare has become now that the government has put their fat lazy fingers into it. My premiums have tripled, And I no longer can go to see a decent doctor, or go somewhere like Mayo Clinic, but I have to go to a dirty, sleazy downtown hospital where the nurses act like doctors. Thanks for NOTHING Obama. What a load of crap. The funny thing is, this movie seemed cool to me when I saw it as a young teenager, because I was still a kid, and had no idea how idiotic the whole socialist program was, and I was too young to be insulted as a white woman because I was still young enough to have some white guilt.

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. Even at doing that he's facing a heavily financed rightwing opponent. With defeat staring him in the face and no home life so to speak with both he and his wife pursuing the opposite sex, Bulworth just decides to chuck it all. His friends in the insurance industry are writing him one whopping life insurance policy and Bulworth hires a hit man to do him in. Of course no with nothing to lose our U.S. Senator who before mouthed the political platitudes and nostrums we get from our elected officials at voting time, now starts telling some uncomfortable truths. Lack of sleep and some controlled substances produce a rapping U.S. Senator who along the way picks up some black groupie types with Halle Berry. The consequences of all these hijinks you'll have to watch Bulworth for. One friend has compared it Network and there are certainly some similarities. I think Bulworth should be seen back to back with Robert Redford's The Candidate. If you'll remember Redford was the idealistic liberal who trimmed his sails through the advice of his hired spin doctors and got himself elected U.S. Senator from California. His Bill MacKay was wondering what he does then at the end of that film. 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. Director Beatty gets some good performances by his cast and best in the supporting cast is his aide Oliver Platt who sees his whole career going down the tubes. There's a peculiar symbiotic relationship between Capitol Hill staffers and their bosses. They serve at the pleasure of, but at the same time a good one can make himself pretty valuable to his boss. Platt's such a guy, his character is quite authentic. Remember watch Bulworth back to back with The Candidate.

This is a very funny film, because it is so ridiculous. It is a very sad reflection of American society that this has received so many high marks. I have lost all respect for Beatty. God help us all if he becomes president.

A politician has nothing left to lose.. so why not speak the truth? 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. Words aren't worth a penny unless you're worth billions. 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. These observations are made satirically, but effectively. This is not a heavy-handed work. One thing that hampered Bulworth at the box-office 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 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. Overall rating: 8 out of 10.

I didn't really want to bother commenting on this stinker - but seeing how the current set of votes park the movie in an almost 'must see' bracket I have to interject. So, deep breath... What on earth were they thinking? By 'they' I mean everyone who was involved in this turgid nonsense. Sure it has some reasonable social commentary, but it's all wrapped up in an absurdly, childish premise combined with quite the worst performance I think I've seen from an established, confident actor. He raps? Craps more like. It's so bad I wouldn't know where to begin, so here's a summary of the pluses and minuses - Pluses... um... it's in color... okay, minuses... it's a boring, nonsensical, badly directed, amateurishly edited, unbelievably mediocre, rambling, story-less, glowingly foolish waste of time and money (i.e. yours). It's so god-awful that if this movie were to step in dog pooh, the pooh would wipe IT off it's shoe. Please believe me when I say you MUST avoid this rubbish.

One of two alleged motion pictures that I have voluntarily failed to view to completion in my half century plus of movie attendance. Except for a paltry few humorous moments, one of the most worthless efforts ever put to celluloid. But what else can you expect when you allow a shallow thinking, self congratulatory, egocentric like Beatty to run amok with a typewriter. WB, long a Hollywood darling, exposed himself as the personification of the Emperor's new clothes, and the real life equivalent of Being There's Chauncey. Senseless, gratuitously profane, extravagantly offensive and worst of all, gut wrenchingly boring, to the extent that only the most avid devotees of Beatty's crabbed philosophical views could appreciate it. As it sludged painfully on, getting worse with each scene, I found myself wondering what could possess any homo sapien writer with an IQ above 50 to continue to disgorge this bile with absolutely no smattering of socially redeeming value. Fortunately my psychological defensive mechanisms have succeeded in blurring this grotesque memory over the past seven years to the point where I can now bear to write about it without initiating gross reflux. Can you tell I didn't like it? Want a succinct review? Bullworthless.