1998 in Review: "Bulworth"
He's so vain, he probably thinks the plight of Black America is about him
Bulworth is a bizarre film. To a young viewer in 2023, it might seem like the most problematic movie ever made. It’s a political comedy that attempts to hold white liberals accountable for their failures on race through a redemption arc of one of those white liberals that sidelines and trivializes its Black characters. A white savior movie that critiques white saviors. Warren Beatty raps in it. Terribly. Oh, and he says the n-word.
Beatty plays Jay Billington Bulworth, a California Senator whose ‘60s idealism has curdled into centrism and is now on the verge of being re-elected to another useless term. The opening scenes finds him watching his own campaign ads, in which he supports welfare reform and an end to affirmative action, and weeping uncontrollably. He is so disappointed with himself that he pays a hitman to assassinate him, while negotiating a $10 million life policy that will benefit his daughter after his death. It’s a deal with the devil, i.e. a smug insurance executive (Paul Sorvino) who offers the policy in exchange for Bulworth’s agreement to kill a health care reform bill. It’s a clever set-up made all the more compelling when Bulworth, liberated by the knowledge of his impending death, shrugs off his ass-kissing responsibilities and begins to simply tell the truth as he sees it.
Over the course of a fundraising weekend in Los Angeles, he tells the congregants at a Black church that they should “put down the malt liquor and chicken wings and get behind someone other than a running back who stabs his wife.” He tells a room full of Jewish studio executives that their movies are terrible. After learning of the existence of rap music while chasing Nina (Halle Berry), a woman of mysterious motives, into a South Central after hours club, he insults a room full of his top donors in verse, including the insurance executive he had promised to help. “You can call it single payer, the Canadian way, but only socialized medicine will ever save the day,” he intones. “Let’s hear that dirty word…socialism!”
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