BULWORTH

Bulworth is about a Democratic senator from California, up for reelection in 1996, who is having a nervous breakdown, takes out a contract on himself, and then finds himself blurting out the truth instead of the usual packaged lies during his campaign. He hasnt slept for days, and after throwing caution to the winds and going off to a hip-hop club with Nina and two other young women from South Central L. A., he starts parsing out all his public statements in rap, scandalizing his staff and various media people with the form and content of his forthright declarations.
Beatty uses his characters alternating absurdity and lucidity to play daffy riffs on his own persona, an approach that has its shortcomings as well as its dividends. Far from following any narrative logic of psychology or character, Bulworth remains from beginning to end a jerry-built postulate combining bits of Beatty with the ruined ideals of the Democratic party. (Jonathan Rosenbaum)