''Bulworth'' is a 1998 American
political satire
Political satire is satire that specializes in gaining entertainment from politics; it has also been used with subversive intent where Political discourse analysis, political speech and dissent are forbidden by a regime, as a method of advancing ...
black comedy film
A comedy film is a category of film which emphasizes humor. These films are designed to make the audience laugh through amusement. Films in this style traditionally have a happy ending (black comedy being an exception). Comedy is one of the old ...
co-written, co-produced, directed by, and starring
Warren Beatty
Henry Warren Beatty (né Beaty; born March 30, 1937) is an American actor and filmmaker, whose career spans over six decades. He was nominated for 15 Academy Awards, including four for Best Actor, four for Best Picture, two for Best Director, ...
. It co-stars
Halle Berry,
Oliver Platt
Oliver Platt (born January 12, 1960) is a Canadian-born American actor. He is known for his starring roles in many films such as ''Flatliners'' (1990), ''Beethoven'' (1992), '' Indecent Proposal'', ''The Three Musketeers'' (both 1993), '' Execut ...
,
Don Cheadle
Donald Frank Cheadle Jr. (; born November 29, 1964) is an American actor. He is the recipient of multiple accolades, including two Grammy Awards, a Tony Award, two Golden Globe Awards and two Screen Actors Guild Awards. He has also earned ...
,
Paul Sorvino
Paul Anthony Sorvino (, ; April 13, 1939 – July 25, 2022) was an American actor. He often portrayed authority figures on both the criminal and the law enforcement sides of the law.
Sorvino was particularly known for his roles as Lucchese cri ...
,
Jack Warden
Jack Warden (born John Warden Lebzelter Jr.; September 18, 1920July 19, 2006) was an American character actor of film and television. He was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for ''Shampoo'' (1975) and '' Heaven Can Wait' ...
, and
Isaiah Washington
Isaiah Washington IV is an American actor and media personality. Following a series of film appearances, he came to prominence for portraying Dr. Preston Burke in the first three seasons of the series ''Grey's Anatomy'' from 2005 to 2007.
Wash ...
. The film follows the title character,
California
California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...
Senator
A senate is a deliberative assembly, often the upper house or chamber of a bicameral legislature. The name comes from the ancient Roman Senate (Latin: ''Senatus''), so-called as an assembly of the senior (Latin: ''senex'' meaning "the el ...
Jay Billington Bulworth (Beatty), as he runs for re-election while trying to avoid a hired assassin. The film received generally positive reviews and a nomination for the
Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay
The Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay is the Academy Awards, Academy Award for the best screenplay not based upon previously published material. It was created in 1940 as a separate writing award from the Academy Award for Best Story. Be ...
yet narrowly failed to break even on a $30 million budget. However, Beatty was praised for tackling race, poverty, dysfunction in the health care system, and corporate control of the political agenda, with eminent legal scholar
Patricia J. Williams noting the film examined "racism's intersection with America's deep, and growing, class divide."
[ The movie is an uncredited remake of Aki Kaurismäki's '']I Hired a Contract Killer
''I Hired a Contract Killer'' is a film directed, produced and written by the Finnish auteur Aki Kaurismäki in 1990. It is a Finnish-British- German-Swedish co-production and stars the renowned French actor Jean-Pierre Léaud. The film also f ...
''.
Plot
Jay Bulworth, a Democratic U.S. Senator
The United States Senate is the upper chamber of the United States Congress, with the House of Representatives being the lower chamber. Together they compose the national bicameral legislature of the United States.
The composition and powe ...
from California
California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...
, faces a primary challenge
In U.S. politics, a primary challenge is when an incumbent holding elective office is challenged by a member of their own political party in a primary election. Such events, known informally as "being primaried," are noteworthy and not frequent ...
from a fiery young populist. Once politically liberal
Liberal or liberalism may refer to:
Politics
* a supporter of liberalism
** Liberalism by country
* an adherent of a Liberal Party
* Liberalism (international relations)
* Sexually liberal feminism
* Social liberalism
Arts, entertainment and m ...
, Bulworth has over time conceded to more conservative
Conservatism is a cultural, social, and political philosophy that seeks to promote and to preserve traditional institutions, practices, and values. The central tenets of conservatism may vary in relation to the culture and civilization i ...
politics and to accepting donations from large corporations. While he and his wife have been having affairs with each other's knowledge for years, they maintain a happy facade for the sake of their public image. Tired of politics and unhappy with life, Bulworth makes plans to kill himself, and negotiates a $10 million life insurance
Life insurance (or life assurance, especially in the Commonwealth of Nations) is a contract between an insurance policy holder and an insurer or assurer, where the insurer promises to pay a designated beneficiary a sum of money upon the death ...
policy with his daughter as the beneficiary. Knowing that a suicide would void the policy, he contracts to have himself assassinated within two days.
He arrives extremely drunk at a Los Angeles campaign event, where he freely speaks his mind in the presence of the C-SPAN
Cable-Satellite Public Affairs Network (C-SPAN ) is an American cable and satellite television network that was created in 1979 by the cable television industry as a nonprofit public service. It televises many proceedings of the United States ...
film crew following his campaign. After dancing all night in an underground club and smoking marijuana
Cannabis, also known as marijuana among other names, is a psychoactive drug from the cannabis plant. Native to Central or South Asia, the cannabis plant has been used as a drug for both recreational and entheogenic purposes and in various tra ...
, he begins rapping in public. His frank, offensive remarks make him an instant media darling and re-energize his campaign. He becomes romantically involved with Nina, a young black activist, who begins to join him on campaign stops. He is pursued by the paparazzi, his insurance company, his campaign managers, and an increasingly adoring public, all the while awaiting his impending assassination.
After a televised debate during which Bulworth derides insurance companies and the American healthcare system
The United States far List of countries by total health expenditure (PPP) per capita, outspends any other nation on health care, measured both in ''per capita'' spending and as a percentage of GDP. Despite this, the country has significantly wo ...
while drinking from a flask, he retreats to the home of Nina's family in impoverished South Central Los Angeles
South Los Angeles, also known as South Central Los Angeles or simply South Central, is a region in southwestern Los Angeles County, lying mostly within the city limits of Los Angeles, south of downtown.
It is "defined on Los Angeles city maps as a ...
. He witnesses a group of children selling crack and intervenes to rescue them from an encounter with a racist police officer, and later discovers they work for L.D., a local drug kingpin to whom Nina's brother owes money. Bulworth eventually makes it to a television appearance arranged earlier by his campaign manager, during which he raps and repeats verbatim statements that Nina and L.D. have told him about the lives of poor black people and their opinions of various American institutions, such as education and employment. Eventually he offers the solution that "everybody should fuck everybody" until everyone is "all the same color," stunning the audience and his interviewer.
Bulworth spends the film fearful of a man who had been following him under the assumption that he was the assassin trying to murder him. After the man finally pushes Bulworth to complete terror, he corners Bulworth on a set at the television studio and begins photographing Bulworth with Nina, revealing himself to be simply paparazzi. Bulworth, frustrated, flees with Nina, who reveals that she is the assassin he indirectly hired (ostensibly to make the money needed to pay off her brother's debt) and will now not carry out the job. Relieved, Bulworth falls asleep for the first time in days in Nina's arms. He sleeps for 36 hours, during which the media speculates over his sudden absence leading up to election day. Bulworth wins the primary in a landslide, and L.D. allows Nina's brother to work off the debt. Bulworth accepts a new campaign for the presidency
A presidency is an administration or the executive, the collective administrative and governmental entity that exists around an office of president of a state or nation. Although often the executive branch of government, and often personified b ...
during his victory speech, but is suddenly shot by Graham Crockett, an agent of the insurance company that was fearful of Bulworth's recent push for single-payer health care, who makes a quick escape.
Bulworth's fate is left ambiguous. The final scene shows an elderly vagrant, whom Bulworth met previously, standing alone outside a hospital. He exhorts Bulworth, who is presumably inside, to not be "a ghost" but "a spirit" which, as he had mentioned earlier, can only happen if you have "a song". In the final shot of the film, he asks the same of the audience.
Cast
Production
Beatty first pitched the film in 1992 under the basic pitch of a depressed man putting a hit on himself for the life insurance before falling in love. 20th Century Fox executive Joe Roth approved of the pitch and a budget of $30 million before Beatty got to work on the point of view in politics that would take center stage for the film, with Beatty taking input from writers such as Jeremy Pikser
Jeremy Pikser is an American screenwriter. Pikser is best known for ''Bulworth'' (co-written with Warren Beatty), which was nominated for Academy, Golden Globe and WGA Awards for Best Screenplay, and won the Los Angeles Film Critics' Best Screenpla ...
, James Toback
James Toback (; born November 23, 1944) is an American film director and screenwriter. His screenplay for '' Bugsy'' won the 1991 Los Angeles Film Critics Association award for best screenplay of the year and was nominated for both the Academy Aw ...
and Aaron Sorkin
Aaron Benjamin Sorkin (born June 9, 1961) is an American playwright, screenwriter and film director. Born in New York City, he developed a passion for writing at an early age. Sorkin has earned an Academy Award, a BAFTA Award, five Primetime ...
(who reportedly did a re-write on the script). Beatty, long involved in politics since his first hero of Robert Kennedy
Robert Francis Kennedy (November 20, 1925June 6, 1968), also known by his initials RFK and by the nickname Bobby, was an American lawyer and politician who served as the 64th United States Attorney General from January 1961 to September 1964, a ...
, wanted to make a film that would strike the perceived notion that politics had become too absorbed in polls and fundraising while losing sight on the issues that matters most. Beatty styled his film in hip-hop and rap because of the "great comic contrast" that would come from it.
Soundtrack
The soundtrack was released on April 21, 1998, by Interscope Records
Interscope Records is an American record label owned by Universal Music Group through its Interscope Geffen A&M imprint. Founded in late 1990 by Jimmy Iovine and Ted Field as a $20 million joint venture with Atlantic Records of Warner Mus ...
.
Critical reception
The film generated a great deal of controversy and received a positive reception from film critics.
On Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...
it has a 76% approval rating based on 67 reviews, with an average rating of 7.10/10. The site's consensus states: "Star and director Beatty's ambitious take on race and politics in 20th-century America isn't perfect, but manages to provide more than its share of thought-provoking laughs." On Metacritic
Metacritic is a website that review aggregator, aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted arithmetic mean, weighted average). M ...
it has a score of 75% based on reviews from 28 critics. Audiences surveyed by CinemaScore
CinemaScore is a market research firm based in Las Vegas. It surveys film audiences to rate their viewing experiences with letter grades, reports the results, and forecasts box office receipts based on the data.
Background
Ed Mintz founded Ci ...
gave the film a grade "C+" on scale of A to F.
Writing in ''Time Out New York
''Time Out'' is a global magazine published by Time Out Group. ''Time Out'' started as a London-only publication in 1968 and has expanded its editorial recommendations to 328 cities in 58 countries worldwide.
In 2012, the London edition becam ...
'', Andrew Johnston observed: "More than anything else, ''Bulworth'' is descended from Preston Sturges
Preston Sturges (; born Edmund Preston Biden; August 29, 1898 – August 6, 1959) was an American playwright, screenwriter, and film director. In 1941, he won the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay for the film '' The Great McGinty'' (1940), h ...
's topical farces of the 1940s, which juxtaposed a deep belief in the promise of America with irreverent attacks on the hypocrisy of its institutions."
Patricia J. Williams saw the film three times, saying: " eattyknows power, if not the ghetto, and this movie is effective precisely because it takes on the issue of power... I kept going back because I am amazed by a movie this overtly left wing, fearless and eccentric." She added: "Bulworth isn't about race alone; more specifically, it's about racism's intersection with America's deep, and growing, class divide."
''The Washington Post
''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large nati ...
'' rated the film 19th on a list of "The 34 best political movies ever made".
Box office
The ''Los Angeles Times
The ''Los Angeles Times'' (abbreviated as ''LA Times'') is a daily newspaper that started publishing in Los Angeles in 1881. Based in the LA-adjacent suburb of El Segundo since 2018, it is the sixth-largest newspaper by circulation in the Un ...
'' commented that ''Bulworth'' did "extremely well" on a limited release
__FORCETOC__
Limited theatrical release is a film distribution strategy of releasing a new film in a few theaters across a country, typically art house theaters in major metropolitan markets. Since 1994, a limited theatrical release in the Unite ...
. Despite this, the film ultimately grossed just $29,202,884 worldwide at the box office
A box office or ticket office is a place where ticket (admission), tickets are sold to the public for admission to an event. Patrons may perform the transaction at a countertop, through a hole in a wall or window, or at a Wicket gate, wicke ...
.
Accolades
Cultural legacy
In 2013, ''The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'' reported that President Barack Obama
Barack Hussein Obama II ( ; born August 4, 1961) is an American politician who served as the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, Obama was the first African-American president of the U ...
had, in private, "talked longingly of 'going Bulworth,'" in reference to the film.
References
External links
*
*
{{Warren Beatty
1998 comedy films
1998 films
20th Century Fox films
American political comedy films
American political satire films
Films about elections
Films about suicide
Films about the media
Films directed by Warren Beatty
Films produced by Warren Beatty
Hood films
Films scored by Ennio Morricone
Films set in 1996
Films set in California
Films set in Los Angeles
Films shot in California
Films shot in Los Angeles
Films with screenplays by Warren Beatty
1990s English-language films
1990s American films