Bulworth film review

certificate_18

BULWORTH

Sick of politics, campaign rhetoric and, above all, himself, Senator Jay Billington Bulworth (Warren Beatty) secures a large life insurance investment and hires a hitman to kill him sometime before Monday morning. Bulworth then begins the weekend's vote canvassing among LA's less affluent black communities but - suddenly invigorated and devil-may-care - embarks on a spree of upsetting conventions with brutal home truths and all-night partying with the slinky Halle Berry. And that's just for starters.

Superb satire from writer-director Beatty (who puts in a stand-out performance), which manages to avoid the preachy cliche that so often dogs the politician-turned-idealist theme. Indeed, watching his portrait of a disintegrating United States Senator is almost as fascinating as watching what the bits get up to afterwards. This involves, for the most part, Halle Berry's spiky potential love interest and Oliver Platt as Bulworth's campaign manager - whose hair is torn out in increasingly frantic clumps as the weekend wears on - both of whom are excellent. With real-life American politics providing dramatic viewing anyway, fiction may be seen as light relief, but Beatty's skilled semi-farce is forthright, uncompromising and carries a serious, provocative message.