Film: Bulworth (18)

Xan Brooks
Saturday 23 January 1999 00:02 GMT
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Compare the fortunes of Warren Beatty to those of his fellow early Seventies pretty boy Robert Redford. For while Redford looks to have sunk into old-lag conservatism with last year's The Horse Whisperer, Beatty's own star-director effort proves a far more robust and risk-taking affair. An exuberant attack on the US political system, Bulworth (above) has Beatty as a suicidal senator turned loose-cannon truth-teller hanging out in the 'hood, delivering his speeches in a rap cadence and explaining that candidates always break their promise to the black electorate because "you haven't really come up with any money for my campaign". Crude and clunking at times, Bulworth gets by on the sheer free-wheeling force of its convictions; its vibrant, heart-on-sleeve zeal. Thirty years after Bonnie and Clyde, it puts Beatty back at the cutting edge.

On general release

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