Bulworth
USA 1998
Reviewed by Richard Kelly
Synopsis
Our synopses give away the plot in full, including surprise twists.
1996, the eve of US primary elections. Jay Bulworth, Democratic senator for California, promises lobbyist Graham Crockett he will obstruct a healthcare bill in return for $10 million of life insurance. Intending to provide for his family, Bulworth contracts his own assassination with mobster Vinnie. At a South Central Los Angeles church, Bulworth abandons his campaign speech to tell the black congregation that the Democratic Party disdains them. Outside, he is intrigued by a young woman, Nina. At a Hollywood party, he denounces the film industry. Bulworth feels revitalised. He accompanies Nina to a rap club, but fears his assassin is pursuing him.
At a fundraiser the next day, Bulworth 'raps' a tirade against big business to an appalled audience. Bulworth decides to cancel his assassination, but is thwarted by Vinnie's death. Bulworth is unaware that Nina is his contracted killer. During a television debate, Bulworth lambasts the networks and alienates Crockett. His aide Murphy sabotages proceedings but realises Bulworth's outspoken approach is impressing people. Bulworth hides out with Nina's family. Wearing hip-hop clothes, Bulworth gives a controversial television interview. Afterwards, he and Nina are cornered by the 'assassin' - actually a paparazzo. Back at Nina's, she confesses her secret, but lets him live. Bulworth wins the election, and the media descend on Nina's home. She and Bulworth kiss before the cameras; but he is shot dead, the bullet coming from a vantage where Crockett was lurking moments earlier.
Review
Just how much of a Marxist is Warren Beatty? Perhaps this question has never detained younger film fans, who might know Beatty only as a semi-legendary seducer and the perpetrator of Dick Tracy (1990). But consider the red thread political thread which runs through his acting credits alone: Bonnie and Clyde (1967) and McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971), The Parallax View (1974) and Shampoo (1975), Bugsy (1991) and (yes) Ishtar (1987). Beatty has always professed a certain idea of the Left, and he has the cuttings to prove it. Prominent amid Bulworth's set-dressing are authentic snapshots of Beatty with Robert Kennedy and Huey P. Newton: incompatible ghosts of a radical past. Beatty was a vigorous cheerleader for George McGovern in 1972, and throughout the 80s he counselled Gary Hart, albeit to little obvious avail. Between these engagements, he was a charismatic incarnation of John Reed in Reds (1981), extolling Bolshevism to the American proletariat.
Now, here's Bulworth, a polemical assault on present US political torpor. As with Reds, Beatty wears the Wellesian mantle of star-writer-producer-director. "What animated Hollywood in the 70s," Beatty recently opined, "was politics. You can mark the end of that with the election of Carter. There's nothing that can destroy the Democratic Party like a Democrat." American leftists have swallowed this poisonous lesson for several decades now, so it comes as quite a thrill when, midway through Bulworth, Beatty's campaigning senator throws down an unfashionable gauntlet: "Lemme hear that dirty word - socialism!"
Bulworth's fundamental plank - that the Republican and Democratic Parties are bankrolled by the same venal corporate élite - is a numbing truism. Bulworth, mortally ashamed of his part in this puppet-show, abandons the 'bipartisan' drivel of his stump speeches (Clintonoid-Blairesque staples such as "I believe in a hand-up, not a hand-out") and becomes a holy fool. Initially, he can muster only a stream of 'incautious' remarks - impoverished blacks should lay off the malt liquor, Hollywood's "Big Jews" should quit churning out garbage - seemingly tailored by Beatty to generate nervous laughter in the cinemas. But gradually, the road of 'politically incorrect' excess leads Bulworth to radical wisdom, and he bites the hand of the corporate oligarchy which has sustained him.
Naturally, being a Beatty hero, Bulworth is doomed - much like The Parallax View's patsy journalist Joe Frady. But Bulworth has bigger fish to indict than the conspiratory phantom that was the Parallax Organisation. Here, real menace is revealed, in the precise form of those profiteers from the US medical-insurance racket. Lurking behind these scoundrels, Bulworth implies, is the present Democratic incumbent of the oval office. Clinton slouched to power in 1992 pledging to deliver universal healthcare, and so abolish the strict fee-for-service fiddle which does such violence to the United States' poor. But he capitulated, shamefully, before the bullish lobbying of the insurance industry.
So where stands the Bulworth ticket on healthcare? In the film's linchpin scene, Bulworth publicly rebukes his insurance paymasters, calling for a single-payer, socialised national health system. Facing down the tissue-thin consensus that governments are best run like private corporations, Bulworth makes a stirring case for statism: "You think these pigs are gonna regulate themselves?" asks the senator.
Bulworth's wrangles with race are a bit trickier. Admirably, Beatty has argued that class is a more formidable social partition than skin colour. Nevertheless, his movie is possessed by a very Los Angelean notion that the US suffers from a specific Black Problem, compounded of drugs, guns and inveterate gangsterism. But Bulworth is also suggestive of the Democratic Party's very own Problem With Blacks. In the 70s, its hierarchs abandoned the legacy of the civil-rights movement. Twice in the 80s, Jesse Jackson offered the Party a populist "Rainbow Coalition", with himself as its chieftain. But Jackson was deemed (politely speaking) "unelectable" - as opposed to Walter Mondale and Michael Dukakis, of whom history, already, remembers nothing. Small wonder, then, that Bulworth informs a South Central congregation that his Party "pretty much forgot" about blacks.
Yet Beatty shows Bulworth to be redeemed by a dose of black urban culture, embodied in Halle Berry's exquisite Nina. He becomes a connoisseur of chicken wings, Philly blunts, and "the nappy dug-out", and delivers his polemics in tortuous rap. All of this might be risible, were it not for a flabbergasting scene where Bulworth, alone at last with Nina, muses over the spirit of Huey Newton, and the absence of "black leaders". Just as we fear Warren is about to offer a personal reminiscence, Nina cuts in to inform him that her mother was a Panther; that the 'leaders' Bulworth frets about were mostly rubbed out by Nixon's damnable Cointelpro operation; and that the malaise of Black America stems from the decline of post-war manufacturing, which provided such vigorous foot-soldiers for civil rights. Dispute that last thesis if you wish, but only John Sayles has served up such brazen dialectical materialism in recent American cinema.
If one wished to cavil: Beatty's highly accomplished visual triumvirate (cinematographer Vittorio Storaro, designer Dean Tavoularis, costumer Milena Canonero) may have given the film too polished a veneer. Throughout, there's a fairly central-casting conception of 'coloured folk'. At one point, Bulworth humiliates a racist LAPD cop, which resembles nothing so much as Beatty collecting a debt on behalf of Rodney King. And Bulworth's heroics are accompanied by too many shots of 'I-like-what-the-man-says' expressions on beaming black faces. Nevertheless, Beatty has once again taken handsome advantage of his Hollywood clout to make a film of dissenting intelligence. He leaves us with a turn from playwright Amiri Baraka, as a panhandler with a gift for muttering ominous oaths. This type of character is already shop-worn from liberal Hollywood pictures such as Grand Canyon. But Baraka's words have resonance: "You gotta be a spirit, Bulworth. You can't be no ghost." This clarion call to political engagement splendidly caps one of the best films to emerge from a Hollywood studio in the 90s.
Credits
- Producers
- Warren Beatty
- Pieter Jan Brugge
- Screenplay
- Warren Beatty
- Jeremy Pikser
- Story
- Warren Beatty
- Director of Photography
- Vittorio Storaro
- Editors
- Robert C. Jones
- Billy Weber
- Production Designer
- Dean Tavoularis
- Music/Music Conductor/ Orchestration
- Ennio Morricone
- ©Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation
- Production Company
- Twentieth Century Fox presents a Warren Beatty film
- Executive Producer
- Lauren Shuler Donner
- Co-producers
- Victoria Thomas
- Frank Capra III
- Production Associate
- Jane Payne
- Production Supervisor
- Jamie D. Boscardin
- Production Co-ordinators
- Brigette Lester
- Lynne White
- Unit Production Manager
- John Rusk
- Location Managers
- Kristan Wagner
- Elisa Conant-Coleman
- Ned Shapiro
- Post-production Supervisor
- Rob Yamamoto
- Production Consultant
- Zelda Barron
- Assistant Directors
- Frank Capra III
- George Bamber
- Andrew Bernstein
- Michael Moore
- Todd Murata
- Script Supervisors
- Kerry Lyn McKissick
- Ellen Evans
- Script Co-ordinators
- Kathy Riordan
- Barbara Schiffman
- Casting
- Victoria Thomas
- Jeanne McCarthy
- Voice:
- Barbara Harris
- Additional Unit Director of Photography
- Jack Wallner
- Camera/Steadicam Operators
- Garrett Brown
- Jonathan Brown
- Nicola Pecorini
- Projected Effects
- Bill Hansard
- Art Director
- William F. O'Brien
- Set Designer
- Dianne Wager
- Set Decorator
- Rick Simpson
- Costume Designers
- Milena Canonero
- Associate:
- Eduardo Castro
- Costume Supervisor
- John Casey
- Costume Co-ordinator
- Jordanna Fineberg
- Make-up
- Key Artist:
- Valli O'Reilly
- Artists:
- Cyndi Reece-Thorne
- Carmé Tenuta
- John Blake
Key Hairstylist- Lynda Gurasich
- Titles
- Scarlet Letters
- Opticals
- Pacific Title/Mirage
- Music Designer
- Bob Badami
- Orchestra
- AMIT - Accademia Musicale Italiana
- Featured Vocalists
- Yvonne Williams
- Sue Ann Carwell
- Edda Dell'Orso
- Amy Stewart
- Score Co-ordinator
- Enrico De Melis
- Music Editor
- Bob Badami
- Recording Engineer
- Fabio Venturi
- Soundtrack
- "Semper fidelis" by John Philip Sousa, performed by The Band of The Grenadier Guards, conducted by Major Rodney Bashford; "It's Rainin'" by Larron Vaughn, performed by God's Property; "Bulworth Breakdown" by Jay Bulworth [Warren Beatty], Jeremy Pikser, Gerald Baillergeau, Victor Merritt, performed by Jay Bulworth, Big Yams & Vino; "Holiday/12 Scanner" by Erin Johnson, Robert McDowell, Dwayne Searcy, William E. Butler, Jerry Butler, performed by Witchdoctor, contains an interpolation of "I Stand Accused" by William E. Butler, Jerry Butler; "Zoom" by Dr Dré, LL Cool J, Glove & Richard Vick, performed by Dr Dré & LL Cool J; "Run" by Darryl Hill, Robert Diggs Jr, performed by Cappadonna; "Ghetto Supastar" by Pras Michel, Wyclef Jean, R. Jones, Barry Gibb, Maurice Gibb, Robin Gibb, performed by Pras Michel, featuring Ol' Dirty Bastard & introducing MYA, containing an interpolation of "Islands in the Stream" by Barry Gibb, Maurice Gibb, Robin Gibb; "Bitches Are Hustlers Too" by Jamecia 'Mimi' Ward, Denise 'Nece' Saulsberry, Owen Ratliff, B. Major, performed by D-Fyne; "Maniac in the Brainiac" by D. Rolison, Ice Cube, Binky, performed by Mack 10 & Ice Cube; "Eve of Destruction" by E. Jeffers, Melvin Bradford, L. Hayward, M. McQueen Jr, B. Williams Jr, performed by Eve, contains an interpolation of "Long as There Is You (I Got Love)" by L. Hayward, M. McQueen Jr, B. Williams Jr; "Joints & Jam" by Paul Poli, William Adams, Allan Pineda, Jaime Gomez, Greg Phillinganes, Barry Gibb, performed by Black Eyed Peas, contains a sample of "Love Till the End of Time" by Greg Phillinganes, also contains an interpolation
of "Grease" by Barry Gibb; "Freak Out" by T. Gaither, T. Riley, A. Davidson, M. Smith, M. Riley, Bernard Edwards, Nile Rodgers, performed by Nutta Butta featuring Anonymous, contains a sample from "Le Freak" by Bernard Edwards, Nile Rodgers; "Lunatics in the Grass" by Louis Freese, J. Gonzalez, performed by B REAL of Cypress Hill; "The Chase" by Robert Diggs, performed by RZA; "Bounce to Da Beat" by Luther Campbell, J. McGowan, Van Bryan, performed by Luke; "Firm Biz" by L. Lewis, N. Jones, A. Cruz, Inga Marchand, A. McGrier, T. Brockert, performed by Nas, Foxy Brown, AZ featuring Dawn Robinson, contains an interpolation of "Square Biz" by A. McGrier, T. Brockert; "Hot Booty" by/performed by Esham; "Washington Post" by John Philip Sousa, performed by The Philip Jones Ensemble; "Glorious Things of Thee Are Spoken" by Franz Joseph Haydn; "Joyful Joyful" by Ludwig van Beethoven; "Kill Em Live" by Chuck D, Gary G-Wiz, performed by Public Enemy; "Church Organ" by Henrik Nielsen; "100 Miles and Running" by Lamont Dozier, Edward Holland Jr., Brian Holland, Eugene Wright, A. Young, L. Patterson, G. Hutchinson, Herbie Hancock, P. Jackson, Melody Raglin, performed by NWA; "U Turn" by/performed by Chris Haynes; "Insane in the Brain" by Louis Freese, Senen Reyes, Larry Muggerud, performed by Cypress Hill; "Sheik of Araby" by Harry B. Smith, Francis Wheeler, Ted Snyder, parody lyrics by Jay Bulworth [Warren Beatty]; "Hay" by Wonoosas Martin, Marrico King, Corey J. Johnson, Ralph Leverston, Terrell Harris, George Clinton Jr, Grace Cook, performed by Crucial Conflict, contains a sample of "I'll Stay" by George Clinton Jr, Grace Cook; "Wrong Nigga to F*** Wit" by O'Shea Jackson, Anthony Wheaton, performed by Ice Cube; "The Stars and Stripes Forever" by John Philip Sousa; "Ultra Design (Alternative)" by Wolfgang Stadele; "Chiquita Banana" by William Wirges, Leonard MacKenzie, Garth Montgomery, parody lyrics by Jay Bulworth [Warren Beatty]; "How Come" by Wyclef Jean, Ndiaga N'Dour, G. Williams, Jerry Duplessis, performed by Youssou N'Dour and Canibus; "How Deep Can You Go" by Tony Randle; "Bulworth (They Talk About It While We Live It)" by Larry Muggerud, C. Miller, C. Parker, A. Johnson, C. Smith, performed by KAM, Method Man, Prodigy, KRS-One - Sound Mixers
- Thomas Causey
- Additional Unit:
- Hank Garfield
- Re-recording Mixers
- Andy Nelson
- Anna Behlmer
- Jim Bolt
- Rick Hart
- Andy D'Addario
- Supervising Sound Editors
- Mark P. Stoeckinger
- Paul Timothy Carden
- Dialogue Editors
- Mark Gordon
- Dan Rich
- Sound Effects Editors
- Dino DiMuro
- Randy Kelley
- Philip A. Hess
- Gary Mundheim
- Lou Kleinman
- ADR
- Supervisor:
- Gail Clark Burch
- Editors:
- Laura Graham
- Kerry D. Williams
- Foley
- Artists:
- Katherine Harper
- Jimmy Moriana
- Ellen Heuer
- Editors:
- Craig S. Jaeger
- Patrick Foley
- Stunt Co-ordinators
- Gary Hymes
- Daniel W. Barringer
- A.J. Nay
- Film Extracts
- Demetrius and the Gladiators
(1954)- 5 Fingers
(1952)- The Girl Can't Help It
(1956)- Planet of the Apes
(1967)- Cast
- Warren Beatty
- Jay Bulworth
- Halle Berry
- Nina
- Don Cheadle
- L.D.
- Oliver Platt
- Dennis Murphy
- Paul Sorvino
- Graham Crockett
- Jack Warden
- Eddie Davers
- Isaiah Washington
- Darnell
- Kimberly Deauna Adams
- Denisha
- Vinny Argiro
- debate director
- Sean Astin
- Gary
- Kirk Baltz
- debate producer
- Ernie Banks
- Leroy
- Amiri Baraka
- Rastaman
- Christine Baranski
- Constance Bulworth
- Adilah Barnes
- Mrs Brown
- Graham Beckel
- man with dark glasses
- Brandon N. Bowlin
- bouncer 2
- Mongo Brownlee
- henchman 3
- Thomas Jefferson Byrd
- Uncle Rafeeq
- J. Kenneth Campbell
- Anthony
- Scott Michael Campbell
- head valet
- Jann Carl
- herself
- Kerry Catanese
- video reporter 4
- Dave Allen Clark
- himself
- Terry Cooley
- henchman 2
- Kevin Cooney
- Reverend Wilberforce
- Christopher Curry
- journalist
- Stanley DeSantis
- Manny Liebowitz
- Mike 'Big Mike' Duncan
- bouncer
- Nora Dunn
- Missy Berliner
- Jerry Dunphy
- himself
Dartanyan Edmonds- man with Blunt
- Edward J. Etherson
- Mr Sasser
- V.J. Foster
- photographer
- Leon Curtis Frierson
- Osgood
- George Furth
- older man
- Xiomara Cuevas Galindo
- video reporter 2
- Robin Gammell
- Geoffrey
- Life Garland
- Darnell's Bud
- Jackie Gayle
- Macavoy
- Jim Haynie
- Bill Stone
- Randee Heller
- Mrs Tannenbaum
- Barry Shabaka Henley
- man at Frankie's
- James Hill
- journalist
- Kene Holliday
- man in church 1
- Brian Hooks
- Marcus Garvey
- Terri Hoyos
- reporter 3
- Myra J
- woman in church 1
- Mario Jackson
- Snag
- Ariyan Johnson
- Tanya
- Jedda Jones
- woman in church 2
- Michael Kaufman
- reporter 1
- James Keane
- American Politics director
- Tom Kelly
- reporter 5
- Larry King
- himself
- Deborah Lacey
- reporter 2
- Mimi Lieber
- Mrs Liebowitz
- Elizabeth Lindsey
- American Politics host
- Joshua Malina
- Bill Feldman
- Larry Mark
- bouncer 3
- Helen Martin
- Momma Doll
- Armelia McQueen
- Ruthie
- Laurie Metcalf
- Mimi
- Michael Milhoan
- cop 1
- Jamal Mixon
- Jerod Mixon
- little gangstas
- Debra Monk
- Helen
- Deborah Moore
- reporter
- Michele Morgan
- Cheryl
- Patrick Morgan
- studio employee
- Juli Mortz
- Larry King's assistant
- Scott Mosenson
- video cameraman
- Paul Motley
- janitor in senate office
Chris Mulkey- cop 2
- Lou Myers
- Uncle Tyrone
- Shawna Nagler
- technical director
- Jonathan Roger Neal
- little gangsta
- Ron Ostrow
- staff member
- Norman Parker
- Irwin Tannenbaum
- James Pickens Jr
- Uncle David
- Wendell Pierce
- Fred
- Kenneth Randle
- Tony Tomas Randle
- Arthur Reggie III
- little gangstas
- Adrian Ricard
- Aunt Alice
- Ava Rivera
- video reporter 3
- Richard Sarafian
- Vinnie
- Robert Scheer
- journalist
- Sam Shamshak
- fundraiser guest
- Sarah Silverman
- 2nd American Politics assistant
- Brooke Skulski
- reporter
- Bee-Be Smith
- Aunt Harriet
- Roberto Soto
- reporter
- Florence Stanley
- Dobish
- Quinn Sullivan
- fundraiser server
- JoAnn D. Thomas
- rapper
- Robin Thomas
- reporter in hallway
- Sheryl Underwood
- woman in Frankie's
- Gary H. Walton
- bouncer 4
- Andrew Warne
- video reporter
- Lee Weaver
- man in church 2
- Kenn Whitaker
- henchman 1
- Jermaine Williams
- Paul Robeson
- John Witherspoon
- Reverend Morris
- Sumiko Telljohn
- lady at banquet
- [uncredited]
- George Hamilton
- himself
- John McLaughlin
- voice of TV commentator
- William Baldwin
- Paul Mazursky
- Certificate
- 18
- Distributor
- 20th Century Fox (UK)
- 9,730 feet
- 108 minutes 6 seconds
- Dolby digital
- Colour by
- Technicolor
- Anamorphic [Technovision]