Our Brand Is Crisis (2015)

Wonderful character development!

Better Late Then Never

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

The film claims to be "inspired by true events" but is closer to a work of total fiction and is designed to make us look at our own candidates in an election year who claim there is a crisis and they are the only ones who can fix it.The movie is entertaining as the quirky and unorthodox Jane Bodine (Sandra Bullock) is hired by a Bolivian senator in a presidential bid. Castillo (Joaquim de Almeida) is "not trustworthy, not likable, stuck up little a-hole." He also has a smirk and connections to the IMF. Bodine takes on the job because her opponent is managed by Pat Candy (Billy Bob Thornton) a master strategist who has beaten Bodine on several occasions.Castiilo's lack of charm is changed into being a forceful individual who can get the job done in what is now a "time of crisis." Bodine has a history with Candy as the campaign becomes personal. This is an interesting behind the scenes view of campaigns filled with humor and universal political themes.Good job Bullock.Guide: F-bomb. No sex or nudity. Sex talk.

"Our Brand is Crisis" saw its pre-release hype dissipate by the time it hit theaters for reasons I can't easily pin down with a few minutes of googling. What I can say is that it's a definite shame this film didn't make it into the conversation for Oscar or gross more than $7 million domestically, because it's a richly textured film with a well-paced sense of adventure and exoticism.The film revolves around the rivalry between two ace political strategists (Sandra Bullock and Billy Bob Thornton) working different sides of a Bolivian election with the cultural sensitivity of two seasoned board game players competing in a heated contest of Risk. Bob Thornton's character is based on James Carville (between this, Saturday Night Live, and Documentary Now, he seems to be a standard part of any impressionist's repertoire). Bullock channels a slightly darker version of her frazzled but endearing rom-com persona in a part that was originally scripted for a male character and she steals the show. A supporting cast of Scoot McNairy, Anthony Mackie, Zoe Kazan and Ann Dowd adds a cadre of characters with varying degrees of seriousness that makes for some memorable bantered dialogue. It's perhaps in keeping with the film's commentary on geopolitical ethno- centrism that the presidential candidatate (Joaquim de Almeida) is the least interesting character in the entourage. There is, however, a relationship that Sandra Bullock's character develops with a local teenager that comes closest to providing the film's protagonist with a moral awakening. The film successfully threads the needle of thought-provoking without being overly preachy, even if the resolution is slightly less profound than it thinks it is.

A washed-up political strategist, Jane Bodine, is hired by a political consultancy to help their client, Senator Castillo, win the Bolivian general election. Bodine used to be the best in the game but an unfortunate series of events during a campaign saw her reputation, and confidence, destroyed. What sealed the deal was that she will be coming up against her long-time arch rival and nemesis, Pat Candy.Reasonably entertaining. Some funny moments and the mood is generally quite light-hearted. Some of the political machinations and stunts are quite clever too and often add to the humour. Some degree of engagement too, as it is clear who you should be backing in the presidential race.However, there's not much new here. The setting - Bolivia - may be original but that's about it. Movies like Primary Colours and Wag the Dog plus TV series like Veep and House of Cards have already covered the dirty inner workings of politics and elections, and done it a lot better. Real life would have prepared the audience too.And there's the other problem. Who wants to be reminded of what a loathsome industry politics is? Not me, that's for sure.There are two twists towards the end, but they don't really do anything for the movie. The first was a touch predictable. The second was idealistic and superficial. They could just have ended it with the election results and left one with the impression that the movie is a comedy. Instead, after being reasonably light- hearted all along, the movie suddenly ramped up the drama and attempts at profundity towards the end. Was pretty shallow and a matter of too little, too late.

Our Brand is Crisis is based on the 2005 documentary of the same name, which followed the participation of James Carville's consulting firm in the 2002 Bolivian campaign for president. Here, Sandra Bullock plays Jane Bodine, a fictionalized version of Carville, called out of semi-retirement, following a declining career as a campaign manager. Like Carville, she accepts the challenge to manage the presidential campaign of Pedro Castillo, a former president who leans to the right on the political spectrum. Bodine's nemesis, Pat Candy (portrayed as deeply cynical in Billy Bob Thornton's performance) represents the populist candidate, Rivera, who is way ahead at the beginning of the campaign in a three-way race.Sandra Bullock is a little better here in some of her previous comic roles (e.g. The Proposal, The Heat), as the initially burnt out Bodine, only engaging in her usual pratfalls (this time it's throwing up all over the place after arriving in Bolivia), at the beginning of the film, and later settling down as a determined strategist, who eventually outfoxes her aforementioned nemesis, Pat Candy.How far will Bodine go in manipulating the public's view of Castillo? This is essentially what keeps our interest as the narrative progresses to the climax—the results of the campaign for president. First Bodine notes that Castillo, with his flat demeanor, is unable to make a personal connection to the electorate. Eventually she softens him up so that he appears to be more emotionally accessible. The team concludes that Castillo must sell the idea to the Bolivian people that the country is in a "crisis," and Castillo is just the man to fix the dire problems facing the country.Bodine urges Castillo to adopt smear tactics against his opponent but the high-minded candidate refuses. It's only after Rivera smears Castillo regarding a long-ago extra-marital affair that Castillo relents and allows Bodine to adopt similar tactics. One of those strategies involves publicizing a photo of Rivera, with a Nazi war criminal, standing in the background.Perhaps the most dramatic moment in the film occurs when rocks are thrown at Castillo's campaign bus, forcing it to stop in a small town, where angry indigenous people are protesting the possibility that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) may be allowed into the country. Castillo gets out of the bus and confronts the protesters—promising that the IMF will not be accepted without a referendum. There is also a sub-plot involving Eduardo, a campaign volunteer, who feels connected to Castillo, since a photo was taken of him and the former president on the earlier campaign trail, when he was a child. Eduardo's family members don't share his enthusiasm for Castillo and castigate him for his allegiance to the right-wing candidate.As the film's antagonist, Pat Candy has little screen time, and his confrontations with Bodine mainly amount to a series of conversations that are well-written but don't raise any stakes. The most dramatic of these interactions between the two campaign managers occurs when Bodine tricks Candy into having his candidate reference a quotation attributed to Goebbels, Hitler's vile propaganda minister.When Castillo finally wins the election by the slimmest of margins, he goes back on his promise to hold a referendum on the IMF, alienating even Eduardo, one of his most ardent supporters. And Bodine, after informing Eduardo that she wasn't responsible for Castillo's deception regarding his campaign promise, later joins him in an unlikely show of solidarity with the people she worked against during the campaign.Our Brand is Crisis is thoroughly watchable despite a dearth of big dramatic moments and a significant antagonist that propels the action forward. It has been said that the film lost money because it was inaccurately billed as a comedy. Maybe so, but this dramedy is worth at least one look.