Rating: 
Summary: Conscience of a Politician Finds its way to the Surface
Review: What a great movie. Jay Bulworth, a US Senator, has himself a nervous breakdown, and hires a hitman to kill him. . . He dissapears for a few days and emerges with a conscience. He becomes dedicated to fighting poverty, with a twist. What a concept. The cast is great. The character interaction beween Warren Beaty and Halie Barry was wonderful. It is definatly dark, but it is hilarious.
Rating: 
Summary: dark and stupid
Review: this is so stupid. the highlight is ghetto superstar the song which plays for 30 seconds. it was really dumb. i mean who would want to see a old guy rap about politics.
Rating:
Summary: THE TIMES THEY ARE A-CHANGIN'
Review: Who can say that motion pictures are not a mirror of the society ? When Frank Capra, during WW2, presented MR SMITH GOES TO WASHINGTON or MR DEEDS GOES TO TOWN, it wasn't necessary for this director to give an explanation of the deep motivations which lead his heroes. Gary Cooper and James Stewart were idealistic guys whose actions please the audience's thirst for social justice. Now when Warren Beatty desires to shoot BULWORTH, he has to present a comedy if he doesn't want that the public considers his movie as a Disney product destined to the 10 years old audience. Jay Bulworth is going nuts because he hasn't anything to lose anymore. So why not tell the truth to the californian voters. BULWORTH is a public confession : Warren Beatty confesses to the world that he has always lied, that politics are made of this. BULWORTH is a bitter-sweet comedy : american people don't care. BULWORTH is a tragedy : he will be reelected. For sure Warren Beatty has had a great time writing BULWORTH. Who wouldn't have ? To tell, under the veil of a comedy, what you have kept hidden in your mind during years must be a real pleasure. Just think of the scene at the Hollywood moghuls' house. In my opinion, BULWORTH deserves to be considered as the best american movie of 1998 for his critical vision of a society looking for a lost ideal. A DVD zone your library.
Rating: 
Summary: Ghetto-Fabulous
Review: The star of Bulworth is Warren Beaty. Not only as the title character, but co-writer, producer, and director of a film that for all exstensive purposes, should not get made in today's modern P.C. (pretend un-P.C.) Hollywood climate. As a writer is where Warren really shows his talent, creating a quick, rich, unrelenting script that is at times satire, comedy, and political anthem all at once. Bulworth is the name of central character Jay Billingsly Bulworth, a California Democrat who has recently forsaken his long-standing leftist beliefs for the sake of reelection in 1996. When we meet Bulworth, he is suffering somewhere between a nervous breakdown and a crisis of conscious over his new path and life which eventually leads him to arrange his own assasination. When that assasination fails to occur on time, Bulworth, forced to continue his routine, begans to publicly unravel his reputation and political career by speaking truths about the state of modern affirs and politics. Essentially telling a black church that promises made in the wake of the L.A. riots were no more than photo-ops, and that we were unimportant because they didn't contribute money to his campaign. Eventually, Bulworth begins to enjoy his new-found frankness, telling a bunch of Hollywood Moguls (in a wonderful scene by a lamenting star from the old system) that they made garbage and were only on his stop because they were "Jews". Thus continues his travels as he makes friends with several ghetto-females from South Central, one of which (Halle Berry) he begins to fall in love with despite her somewhat shady secret. Before long, with a new leash on life, Bulworth regrets the decision to take his life, and tries to undo the assasination, all the while watching his new political approach have a startling positive affect at the polls. Bulworth mainly consist of decidly leftist beliefs (almost socialistic) which may turn off political opposites. But the theme of both the failure of modern politics, as well as the aching loss of black leadership is one that should be appreciated by all. When you throw in the great laughs and touching views of an elder statesman of Hollywood, with a wonderful soundtrack featuring Ice-Cube, Public Enemy, Mack 10 and others, what you are left with is a completely unique and enjoyable film experience.
Rating:
Summary: A dirty word: socialism
Review: This is one of the most bitter, funniest and harshest movies in the 90's. Maybe the most. Warren Beatty, in his fourth film as a director - and his first one as a screenwriter - is great as this democrate, over-exhausted and desperate senator who turns crazy during his campaign and lets down the bla-bla-bla for some real talking. The beginning, in Washington, is depressive and real funny in the same time: Bulworth cries but he does it watching his own hypocrisy on the screen ('We stand on the doorstep of a new millenium...'). His marriage is a complete failure. Tired and desperate by his own life, disgusted by the empty, senseless and lying speeches prepared for him, he decides to get over all of this and puts a contract on... himself. Then he starts his campaign and arrives in L.A., first in South Central, the Black ghetto, and falls in love with a real beauty (Halle Berry, lately 'Academy-awarded'). He comes back to life and tries to cancel the 'research' he'd started but his contact has a heart attack... This very funny and inventive story was original enough for having being nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay in 1998, along with "Saving Private Ryan", "Life is beautiful" and "Shakespeare in Love". The film gives us many great and raving moments, especially that meeting that degenerates into a rap and hip-hop concert, and that broadcasted, hilarating, angry interview ('Obscenity?'). The soundtrack, 'rappy' and agressive (Dr. Dre, Ice Cube...), is quite unusual in a Hollywood great production, even if it mixes with Ennio Morricone's lyrical, superb partitions (what a great idea!) and with the usual political musical stuff. On the whole, Beatty makes us laugh as he shoots everything, especially the hard cynicism of the American political and business circles, showing the social and ecological failure of the system ('As long as we can drive a car, the whole planet can die'). He uses comedy and rap music - of course he (maybe) doesn't rap great, Mr. Kelly, but don't forget he's sixty! At his age, he makes a brilliant performance - to get his message through. And he does it so well, with so much strength that the movie was released with no rush and partly censored by the very studio which financed it. In Paris and suburbs, the movie was screened in only six theaters. But Bulworth doesn't care. He made it.
Rating:
Summary: One of the worst movies I've seen in years
Review: What a terrible (and painful) experience this movie was. No new ground, just fairly inane political, social posturing and commentary that was done better on All In The Family years ago. Old white guy meets hip black girl, starts rapping at inappropriate places, shouts out bland comments about social justice, learns to party with the "peeps". Add that to the forced acting and...oh...nevermind...god...give me back my ninety minutes...or erase this from my memory.
Rating:
Summary: The gospel of Bulworth
Review: Most important movie of 1998? Right up there with American History X. Not bad for a comedy. A fictional movie that's honest and truthful about the sad state of American politics, you should watch this movie and give it serious thought.
Rating:
Summary: ...AWFUL
Review: Rates 0 stars (but Amazon can't give a rating less than 1). Patently offensive to blacks, whites, liberals and conservatives alike, foul-mouthed and without a single bit of socially-redeeming value.
Rating:
Summary: Scathingly funny political satire
Review: Once a prolific superstar, the still bankable Warren Beatty had made just nine movies in the last decade. Three of these have earned him three Oscar nominations and one win. In the 1970s and 1980s, he ranked among the top ten playboys in American. His conquests were legendary. Some of his movies were steamy by the standards of their time. Now over sixty years old, he seems more than happily married to Annette Bening. He has reached the point where he can make movies that interest him. Perhaps we should make that ones which amuse him. Bulworth may have been the most singularly eccentric big budget movie of 1998. It's about a politician, but whereas Primary Colors stayed within a defined framework, Bulworth is all over the map. Yet, depending on your sense of humor, it may be the funniest political satire you will see for some time to come. Beatty is Jay Billington Bulworth, a United States senator from California who is up for yet another term. The time is 1996. As the movie notes, Clinton is running unopposed, and Dole is definitely going to get the Republican nomination. The public is unaroused, which means that the political climate is completely status quo. Meanwhile, Bulworth is about to have one heck of a nervous breakdown. The reason Bulworth goes bananas is never specifically stated, but the implication is that the games, deceptions and deceits that make up modern politics have finally undone him. In deep despair, he gets ten million dollars worth of life insurance and promptly arranges for his own assassination. The next day, he changes his mind. He spends the rest of the moving running both for office and for his life. He goes to fund raisers and insults his wealthy backers. He attends a church in Compton and tells his black audience that they are never going to get any help from Washington, because lower income people are only exploited by the big businesses that pay to get politicians elected. He becomes outrageously incorrect politically. The media, of course, always looking for a hot story, embraces him. There's that hit man to be avoided. We see groups of reporters following Bulworth, who hasn't slept in days. A car backfires. Bulworth starts walking very fast, and then breaks into a run. The reporters run after him. This is a visual sight gag that is hysterical. Sometimes, he makes a getaway by driving off in his big black limo. Such a vehicle looks ridiculous in a chase scene, to say the least. 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 boxoffice 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 have never been fond of politics, perhaps because I grew up around a lot of good old boy politicians. I have always enjoyed movies about politics, because they are almost invariably cynical. From 1939's classic Mr. Smith Goes to Washington to Bulworth, Hollywood has shown that the American people are wise to what really goes on. Why we do nothing about it is another question.
Rating: 
Summary: Could be something if we only knew what it was
Review: I watched this film,and it seems unclear. You have this senator who puts out a hit on his self. Then tries to changes it. He goes around and raps and take up African American mannerisms. What is his point? Now, I can see that he is tired of his life and the way it's going,but what does it have to do with getting with African Americans? The best part of the picture is when Beatty dogs out these LAPD, and this little kid remarks how this is the best thing he ever saw in his whole life, and he's no more than eight or nine. Imagine that. This could have been a great film if only you knew what it was.
| 
