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So, he decides to commit suicide. But it’s not all about politics. He’s trapped in a loveless marriage with a wife who doesn’t respect him. His daughter hates him. He just lost most of his fortune in a bad stock investment. It’s all sad trombones and crocodile tears for Bulworth, and for the first few minutes of the film, it’s hard to tell whether or not we’re looking at Bulworth or Beatty, openly weeping as he listlessly flips through television channels. We’re not sure whether he’s crying because of what he sees, or because he’s self-righteous enough to think he’s the only one who can. Either way, the Senator embarks upon a series of questionable decisions, beginning with but not limited to hiring a hitman to assassinate him.

Now, you’ve got a catastrophically disillusioned politician who hasn’t slept in days about to embark on the last leg of his final campaign. He’s secure in the knowledge that he will soon be dead, and nothing he says or does will matter. He starts out being merely candid, like when he tells parishioners at an inner city church that yes, politicians do promise things to get votes and then fail to deliver because they know you can’t take your vote back. Then Bulworth drags his entourage to a nearby club for an all-night party, and reality quite literally implodes.

I saw Bulworth once or twice back in the day, and as I watched it now, I realized why I remembered relatively little about it. The moment Bulworth steps into that church, a subplot develops concerning a perceived leadership vacuum in the black community, according to Warren Beatty. The Senator is at best insulting, at worst racist as he speaks his mind and many of the parishioners inexplicably embrace it. In this universe, the black community was just waiting for Jay Bulworth to step up with some straight talk.

And about 40-odd minutes in, he cries havoc and lets slip the dogs of What the Fuck.

Without warning, Bulworth becomes a patently uncomfortable Beatty’s-eye-view of African-American culture, and it's impossible to look away. There are some good times, as Bulworth’s suicidal sense of anticipation has him jumping out of his skin every time a car backfires (something I can't recall hearing in real life, but it happens a lot in this movie). And there are genuinely funny moments when Beatty loses himself in the character’s neurosis. It reminds me of what this movie might have been; the story of a well-meaning man, enveloped by a system he helped create, trying to find meaning again.

Instead we get Bulworth becoming obsessed with Nina (Halle Berry), a girl he spots at the club. There is no logic to this; they're two main characters, they're supposed to meet, so they do. Nina turns out to be quite the activist, and when she delivers Bulworth his call to action less than an hour into the movie, it's a cringe inducing diatribe that sounds like she memorized it for ninth grade social studies. Remember, Beatty wrote this script, so he gets to make himself both the reluctant savior of the black community, and love interest to a beautiful woman half his age.

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