Review of Bulworth (1998) by Jordan K — 19 Jul 2015

Bulworth is an odd trip. It's incredibly conflicted on whether to be a silly political comedy with the rapping senator gag and whatnot and then it really wants to be a social commentary, using a musical genre to display messages of racial injustice and its social status.

Senator Jay Billington Bulworth is running for Senatorial reelection but the same old song and dance has him desiring death, plotting for a hitman to kill him. He eventually finds himself living life to the fullest (in a way), taking on rapping in his speeches and becoming one in the African-American community, falling for a young activist who is secretly plotting to kill him herself.

Bulworth is a fun but forgettable ride. Like I mentioned before, it's really split on its main message that the high position Senator is rapping and doing all sorts of silly stuff and then it's somewhat used as a message for racial injustice, this is really noticable in an interview scene where Bulworth raps to a reporter about some lower class issues his peers brought up with him. Politically, it's respectable but a little absurd. Beatty is great as Bulworth but as a director he's iffy. Bulworth also has trouble deciding on who to appeal to, it forgets it's still a political comedy at points. There's nothing super memorable about it, it's an odd trip while it lasted.