Movie review: This might not be your brand of 'Crisis'
Ed SymkusMore Content Now
The timing is definitely right for a film about the marketing of presidential candidates. And because of the ways both the Republicans and the Democrats are dealing with their own collections of nominees, it's even better that the film is a satire.
But "Our Brand Is Crisis" is more than your run-of-the-mill satire. It's sort of based on a real event. The proper term would be "suggested by" an actual story, one that was captured in the 2005 documentary with the same title, in which American marketing was used in a 2002 foreign presidential election.
So here we have a Hollywoodized version of the same thing, focusing on the fictional Jane Bodine (Sandra Bullock), a once-in-demand political strategist who, after a few setbacks (violation of election laws, a stay at the Betty Ford Clinic, a string of losing campaigns), just walked away from it all.
But now a public relations team from her past comes calling because they need her expertise, and she's talked into at least thinking about signing on to her first presidential campaign in six years. For the record, it's for the presidential election in Bolivia. The question is will it be worth it? After all she's quit smoking and drinking, and she's finally able to sleep at night. But then she finds out that the main competition in the election has hired her arch nemesis Pat Candy (Billy Bob Thornton), the strategist who had beaten her in her past three elections. Oh, yeah, she's on board!
When Jane and her team arrive in La Paz, 90 days before the election, Pat's candidate, Rivera, is ahead of their candidate, the much-disliked former President Castillo (Joaquim de Almeida, who you'll recall as the vile Ramon Salazar on "24"), by 30 points.
You'd think that the script would immediately jump to the story of how to handle the situation, and to a degree it does. Jane, who knows her stuff, wants to popularize Castillo by letting him show his true colors – that he's a strong, even belligerent candidate who will help the people of Bolivia. She wants to make everyone root for him, including the indigenous protestors who are demanding that someone solve the social-economic crisis going on there. (This is a movie that's not going to do anything positive for the Bolivian tourist trade.)
But while that plotline is what the film appears to be about, the real story concerns the strained professional relationship between Jane and Pat. Their history of working against each other is well told, but there might be something else going on there, perhaps something of a less professional nature. One of the fun parts of the script is that it isn't made clear.
They're both great at what they do; they both despise and admire each other; he's a smooth operator; she's someone you don't want to cross. And Bullock and Thornton each give terrific performances as characters that remain unpredictable concerning how far they'll go to make their candidate win.
If only screenwriter Peter Straughan ("Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy") and director David Gordon Green ("Pineapple Express") stuck with those elements, instead of inserting unnecessary characters (Zoe Kazan as a dirt-digging computer nerd) and silly "action" sequences (one in a nightclub, another on a wild bus ride), this might have been a film to please general viewers as well as political junkies. Even with the good acting and some well-done scenes, problems emerge near the end when a couple of unexpected plot switches emerge. One, about Castillo, is pretty good, but one involving Jane's future plans just doesn't ring true.
Written by Peter Straughan; directed by David Gordon Green
With Sandra Bullock, Billy Bob Thornton, Anthony Mackie, Scoot McNairy, Joaquim de Almeida
Ed Symkus covers movies for More Content Now.