Movie Review by Susan Sackett

Bulworth (starring Warren Beatty, Halle Berry, Oliver Platt, Paul Sorvino, Jack Warden, Christine Baranski; screenplay by Warren Beatty and Jeremy Pikser, story by Beatty; directed by Warren Beatty ; rated R).

Bulworth is a landmark film, an uproariously funny black comedy that is likely to get lost in the summer feeding frenzy of reptiles on steroids and rocks colliding with Earth. So before you head to the cineplex to chow down on mindless fun, Mensans should definitely check this one out.

Warren Beatty, who hasn’t been this omnipresent since his 1981 epic, Reds, has outdone himself. Bulworth is very worthy, and that’s not bull. Beatty plays a burned-out California senatorial candidate up for re-election in the last days of the California primaries. He’s been at the game too long and he’s ready to cash in his chips – literally. He takes out a life insurance policy to provide for his only child, then hires a hit man to off himself.

He arrives in California even more fried. No food or sleep for days and awash in alcohol, he’s greeted by his handlers, who whisk him to the first of his many last-minute campaign stops and promos – an African-American church in L.A.’s South Central, where he dumps his prepared speech and tells it like it is – I don’t keep my campaign promises because you people don’t contribute to my campaigns. This first truth doesn’t quite set him free, but the door is opening. Then he and his horrified entourage are off to Beverly Hills and a fund-raiser for the Big Money People of the entertainment industry, where he stuffs his face with his first food in days and blurts out, "They always put the big Jews on my schedule."

But Senator Jay Bulworth is no dummy, and he’s not really a bigot-run-amok (as the misleading trailers for this film would seem to indicate). Rather, Bulworth has had enough bullshit. While his handlers frantically tap dance with damage control for what they see as a wildly loose cannon, we come to realize that he’s really telling the truth about politics. Is it because he knows he’s about to meet his self-ordered death and has nothing to lose? Or is it possible that he’s setting himself up for hatred so that his "hit" will seem believable when it does happen (insurance companies don’t pay for suicides – something the movie doesn’t mention, but one possible interpretation)? Whatever the reason, about a third of the way through his self-indulgent binge, he changes his mind about dying and tries to call off the hit. With the assistance of Halle Berry, who looks great but is nevertheless miscast as Beatty’s romantic interest (he’s 61, she’s 29), Bulworth goes through the African-American looking glass and gains first-hand knowledge of the ’hood in some of the best scenes in the film.

Bulworth has a Robert Altman-like feel to it, both in scope and style, as it sprawls across L.A., lambasting politics and the entertainment industry with equal aplomb. And although it’s early in the game to begin to speak of Oscars, Warren Beatty and his latest tour-de-force certainly deserve to be in the running at next Spring’s ceremonies.

FOUR AND A HALF OWLS (OUT OF FIVE)

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