Bulworth

A suicidal political candidate decides to hire someone to assassinate him a few days before his election race ends, and takes his knowledge of this fact, to tell people exactly what’s on his mind, no matter how crude or out of line it may be. He also seems to take on an African-American spirit, and surprising to everyone, including himself, people actually begin to respect his newfound honesty.

An okay movie with plenty of insightful commentary on the state of American politics today, the plight of the poor and African-Americans in today’s society, and all the unwritten political rules that we should all be aware of by now. Having said that, I thought that only some of the scenes in this film were genuinely funny, I did NOT appreciate the “rap character” that Bulworth’s persona would take on from time to time (It just didn’t feel right to me), and thought there was just too much focus on only one aspect of American political injustice (i.e. Is Compton the biggest issue out there?). Beatty and surprisingly, Berry, pulled in some neat performances, and the soundtrack was pretty cool, but I thought that the film just oscillated between too many genres, comedy, drama, romance, political, to satisfy any one completely. On a high note, Oliver Platt delivered one of his best performances ever, with a great rendition of the ultimate sleazy, hypocritical sidekick who changes his opinion on anything in a second, as long as it pleases the populace. All in all, a thoroughly original script, performed with some good actors, but Beatty’s unbelievable “rap character” and the somewhat unfocused direction of the script, left me somewhat detached.

(c) 2021 Berge Garabedian