Political comedies must be one of Hollywood's newest kicks, because they seem to like making movies of that genre. Earlier this year it was Primary Colors starrring John Travolta, this time around it is Warren Beatty's turn as Senator Jay Billington Bulworth in Bulworth. This film took a different approach with the comedy while still delivering the politics... and it worked.
Warren Beatty as Sen. Jay Billington Bulworth
Beatty plays Senator Bulworth, Democrat from California who is running for re-election. He is also on the verge of a nervous breakdown and decides that the political life is not a life worth living, so he takes out a $10 million life insurance policy and hires a man to assasinate him. Then it is off to California to go on the campaign trail and defend his seat in Congress. First stop, a church in South Central L.A. with an all black congregation. Since he believes he is soon to be a dead man, he decides to tell it like it is and gives a speech that is beyond politically incorrect. At one point he is asked why he didn't deliver on earlier promises of putting money into the black community he replies "Well, you people haven't done anything for my campaign"... to which a woman says "You mean that the Democratic party doesn't care about the African American community?" to which Bulworth shockingly replies, "Isn't that obvious?" After that his chief of staff decides he has said enough and pulls the fire alarm. As he is being rushed out of the church, Bulworth say "Oh, that was gooood!"
Halle Berry as Nina
Bulworth is invigorated and continues his campaign with his new "honesty policy". Along the way he meets Nina (Halle Berry), a young black women who shows Bulworth "a whole new side of politics," if you know what I mean (wink, wink). After several stops along his campaign Bulworth realizes that he has found a new reason to live... however calling off the hit is easier said than done. A lot of the remainder of the story is spent with Bulworth and Nina trying to escape from the hitman who is following them around in dark sunglasses. Along the way, the Senator is invited onto a national political talk show with several other big time politicians (Bob Dole, Bill Clinton, etc.) because of his unorthodox new campaign strategy. What follows is by far the best scene in the entire movie... during the interview the reporter asks him why he has become say "ethnic" and why he uses obscenity in his speeches (he had picked up the habit of rapping his speeches). He then goes into a long soliliqy about what is really obscene in America today, politics. It became very obvious that the entire movie was leading up to this response and it was worth it, it may be a bit preachy and peppered with "bad" words... but his speach really made me think, not to mention gave me a much bigger respect for rap music (which, if you know me is a very big task).
Senator Bulworth in his "ethnic" clothes
Overall Bulworth is a very interesting movie. I had read the rave reviews critics around the country were giving this film, praising it as the best political comedy in ages... but more then halfway through I just didn't see it, the movie just didn't have the extra edge that would make it great. Then Senator Bulworth went on that talk show and gave an incredible speech that saved the rest of the movie. It's a shame that we had to go through all the rest of that mediocrity to get to that one jewel, but that is the life of movies. So it is hard to rate Bulworth with any accuracy, if I could just rate the middle (with the speech) it would be like a 4 ½, but with the beginning and the end it had too much set up and preachyness which by itself would be a 2 ½. I guess the only thing to do is try and average them out.
