In Bolivia, the situation is tense: Bodine learns that the indigenous people, who are a majority in the country but lack any real political power, are protesting for constitutional reform to get proper representation. That's true even in "Our Brand Is Crisis," a . She introduces LeBlanc (Zoe Kazan), a young investigator who is hired to dig up dirt on Rivera. Written by Peter Straughan, and according to its credits inspired by the 2005 documentary film of the same name, Our Brand is Crisis uneasily mixes the star vehicle with the screwball-political-comedy/satire with the (half-heartedly, in the end) impassioned call to social consciousness arms. She doesnt believe hell catch her and he expresses disbelief. It starts out with big promises and ends up with jackshit happening.". Reluctantly enlisted to help elect the unlikable bully Castillo (Joaquim de Almeida), Jane gets the bit between her teeth when she discovers that her arch-rival, Pat Candy (Billy Bob Thornton), is running the oppositions campaign. Bullock plays Calamity Jane Bodine, a legendary practitioner of the dark political arts who comes out of semi-retirement to navigate the hapless ex-president back to the top job. Jane and her team had no idea he would do that. The film starts with Jane Bodine (Sandra Bullock) being interviewed. [10] On October 13, 2014, Participant Media announced that they would co-finance the film with Warner, while Jeffrey Skoll and Jonathan King would executive produce, along with Bullock and Stuart M. She will work on the campaign of anybody, provided the money is right. Things you buy through our links may earnNew Yorka commission. Their main tactic is to emphasize the many problems of the economy and present . She moved to a mountain cabin, stopped smoking, got sober, and started doing pottery. A timeline of the (alleged) drama involving Olivia Wilde, Harry Styles, and Florence Pugh. Some said it was staunchly communist. Bodine had fled the consulting scene for years after an eruption of conscience that pushed her to mental breakdown, sobriety, and pottery. Initially under the impression that her man is a dud, Jane is soon animated by Castillos spontaneous response to getting egged (that is, he decks the egger) and her personal animus against Candy. Crisis management examples are easy to find these days: We've seen Uber lose 200,000 users in the wake of #DeleteUber and United lose $800 million in value in just a few hours. Candy can be seen watching the action in the background. Despite Sandra Bullocks strong lead performance, David Gordon Greens film cant push a hopeful tone past its depressing reality. Password must be at least 8 characters and contain: As part of your account, youll receive occasional updates and offers from New York, which you can opt out of anytime. , No amount of political manoeuvring can fix this film [1/4], An uneven mix of cynical satire and breezy comedy. Ben meets her in the hallway and she immediately says hes not a winner, and he cannot win. There are very occasional crude sexual references. By Manohla Dargis. Soon enough she is smoking, drinking, and scheming again, signaling to the viewer that shes back to her antiheroic winning ways. Still offensive? It might be possible to make a good movie out of a cross between Mike Nichols Primary Colors and Costa-Gavras Z, but Our Brand Is Crisis, directed by David Gordon Green in a seeming attempt to do something along those lines, is not that movie. In 2002, Bolivian politician Pedro Castillo hires an American political consulting firm (based on James Carville's Greenberg Carville Shrum firm) to help him win the 2002 Bolivian presidential election. Another graphic shows the race at 22% for Castillo and 26% for Rivera with 16 days to go. Sandra Bullock and Billy Bob Thornton go head to head as strategists in a patchy satire about the 2002 Bolivian elections. The crisis, when it came . Read his answers to our Movie Love Questionnaire here. They make a sling shot out of clothes and shoot something that splatters against Candys window across the foyer. document.write(ts+'script src="http://www.burstnet.com/cgi-bin/ads/ad12539a.cgi/v=2.3S/sz=728x90A|970x66A/'+rnum+'/'+nf+'RETURN-CODE/JS/">'+ts+'/script>'); You can send in your spoiler to other movies by going here. All contents 2023 The Slate Group LLC. However, when two strategists for a struggling Bolivian presidential campaign pique her interest, she goes down to the South American country to see if she should get back in the fight. You never find out. Maybe Carville and the Clintonocracy were empowering democracy after all, even if it wasnt quite the variety they intended. See list of Relevant Issuesquestions-and-answers. As a result of this, Castillo agrees to start running a negative campaign. Read full review SEE ALL 35 REVIEWS User Score Write a Review 6.4 Positive: 23 Before a campaign stop, Jane tells Eddie to help Castillo roll up his sleeves. ***END SPOILER***. This movie offers us the tale of the fall and redemption of an unscrupulous white lady -- who we know cannot really be unscrupulous since shes Sandra Bullock. Answer, Does HIGH MORAL CHARACTER matter in political leaders? Janes conversion, alas, is over-broad and signaled from the start. But it seems as though screenwriter Peter Straughan and director David Gordon Green realized near the end that theyd written a feature-length film celebrating consultants ability to install a lying, oligarchic, IMF-beholden stooge to a South American presidency, and decided they ought to wrap things up more palatably. Ben jumps out and yells, get in the car, what are you doing? There are dozens of pottery jars and bowls covering the walls. Any empathy the audience feels for the nauseous Bodine is likely explained by . She can quote appropriate nuggets of wisdom from Sun Tzu's "The Art of War" and from the world's leaders and thinkers. The firm brings in "Calamity" Jane Bodine to manage Castillo's fledging campaign. We just want to dive into a pool without having to hold onto our bottoms. All of them, except Bodine, have already taken jobs as political consultants in other countries. OUR BRAND IS CRISIS NOTE: This spoiler was submitted by Jason The film starts with Jane Bodine (Sandra Bullock) being interviewed. This Friday, Sandra Bullock assumes the role in Our Brand Is Crisis, a mostly satirical take on a 2005 documentary of the same name about American political consultants conquest of a Bolivian election. Send your questions or comments about this or any other spoiler to: THEMOVIESPOILER.com. The emotional investment Green wants to make in Jane feels misplaced, especially since he also wants to celebrate moments when she behaves abhorrently. It already has. Is it money? She will work on the campaign of anybody, provided the money is right. She then offers money to the driver to overtake the Rivera bus. So those questions remain in the dim and dusty background, behind the quasi-hilarious dirty tricks, the long nights of booze, the almost-condescending interactions with indigenous Bolivians and the rivalrous relationship tinged with both tragedy and Eros between Jane and Thorntons Mephistophelean (and distinctly Carville-like) Pat Candy. Available from various digital retailers including Amazon Video, iTunes, Google Play, Apple, Vudu and others. This satire, directed by David Gordon Green from a screenplay by Peter Straughan, suffers from deficits of wit, wisdom, focus, filmmaking expertise and appropriate tone. The disillusioned Eduardo joins his brothers at a demonstration of people demanding change. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. The real meat of the comedy, and drama, comes in the ingenious dirty tricks that Candy and Bodine play on each other, which could kick off a primer on the political practice recently known as rat-f**king (although that phrase is never uttered in the film). Our Brand is Crisis hits a lot of clunky notes and the end is unforgivably cornball, but it's still one of the liveliest political black comedies I've seen in a while. [3] The film opened on October 30, 2015, alongside Burnt and Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse. Ben says, ok. Directed by David Gordon Green. Arriving at Janes house, she explains she has quit smoking and drinking and has focused on pottery. He has written for a host of other publications and resides in Brooklyn. They then shoot the head of the Rivera doll Candy had left, and it breaks his window. Let me know how that goes. Jane then joins the mass of people who are walking toward the city. ***SPOILER*** Castillo wins the election, and immediately breaks all his promises and turns out to be a tyrant. Its cute for a while. David Gordon Green keeps the perspectives shifting, getting lots of good angles on this three-ring circus. [9] On October 10, Joaquim de Almeida and Zoe Kazan joined the cast, with Almeida playing Castillo, the former president of Bolivia, and Kazan playing a young woman who finds dirt on political candidates. GCS brings in Jane Bodine to manage the campaign in Bolivia--battling her arch-nemesis, the opposition's political consultant Pat Candy. She is approached by Candy, who tells her hes surprised shes working on an unwinnable campaign. The police arrive and the demonstration quickly turns into a riot. She cares about winning, and the movie reinforces the narrative that politics is just a game. In a Netflix comedy by Katharine McPhees stepdaughter. Eddie and his brothers join the protests and are shouting angry chants. Some of her pranks, specifically one ploy to feed her candidates unsuspecting competitor a Nazi quotation during the campaigns final debate, are good for a laugh. After a traumatizing career as a political campaign consultant, Bodine has retired to the snowy mountains, where she doesnt smoke and makes bowls. He says the people in the village dont understand that yet. And in the real Bolivian election of 02, there was no rivalry between warring American spin doctors working for different candidates, because Goni was the only candidate who got that kind of help, in clear preference to his populist opponents on both the right and left. The study of crisis management originated with large-scale industrial and environmental disasters in the 1980s. What sealed the deal was that she will be coming up against her long-time arch-nemesis, Pat Candy. Honestly, I didnt know what to expect, on a number of levels. She offers to reluctantly resign, but Castillo keeps her on. She realizes that she was deceived by Castillo, just like she was attempting to deceive the people of Bolivia. 107 minutes Cast Sandra Bullock as 'Calamity' Jane Bodine Anthony Mackie as Ben Billy Bob Thornton as Pat Candy Zoe Kazan as LeBlanc Scoot McNairy as Buckley Ann Dowd as Nell Director David Gordon Green Screenplay Peter Straughan Writer (original documentary) Cut back to the interview that opened the film. Jane expresses to Ben that she still gets nauseous whenever she sees Castillo. However, Castillo refuses to give permission for the team to do so. Oct. 29, 2015. Candy goes on to tell Jane, If you fight with monsters too long, you become a monster. Jane later says that shell kill herself if she loses to Candy again (though this appears to be hyperbole) She has lost every election against him. Comedy-Drama. But once in Bolivia, shes sidelined by acute altitude sickness (the flight down is accompanied by a primer on the geography and general stressed disposition of the place), and hence unable to immediately show her Sun-Tzu-informed genius to uptight candidate Castillo (Joaquim de Almeida). Mick LaSalle. Our Brand Is Crisis is being released by Warner Bros., but was largely funded by Participant Media, which produces what it calls socially relevant films and documentaries. In other words, in this case the right-wingers are correct: Liberal Hollywood is in full effect. But theres no real fun in determining the extent to which this movie is some sort of a clef expos. Eduardo, a young volunteer of the Castillo campaign, is deeply impressed by this show of commitment. Thornton is sleek, clammy, and leering. Busy Phillips Is Not Like a Regular Mom, Shes a Cool Mom, Theres nothing wrong with Busy Phillips being cast as Mrs. George in the upcoming, In Search of Tom and Katies Bubba Painting, Maybe punting on the larger plot can be forgiven if we get a sweet. This is the meaning of the title. She just needs to hear him deny it. He cant reconcile that her success also makes her a bad person. Greens last three picturesPrince Avalanche, Joe, and Manglehornfelt like personal indie films, and Our Brand Is Crisis seems like an attempt to reach back into the mainstream with a mix of comedy and pathos, and yet it also comes off like a journeyman feature. I found the film to be very interesting, and all the cast put on some of their best performances Ive seen. Digital rental or purchase allows you to instantly stream and download to watch anywhere and anytime on your favorite devices. They make big promises that mean jack shit. Getting hurt is unavoidable, she tells him. He is a crook. You want to know how the Janes of the world happen. Cyril Ramaphosa's ANC Renew22 grouping believes Eastern Cape . There is only one wrong thing to do, she says: Losing. The front-runner, Victor Rivera, is a populist who is appealing to the basest emotions of that poor electorate. [29], "Box-Office Preview: Halloween Forecast Bleak for 'Our Brand Is Crisis', "Sandra Bullock's 'Our Brand Is Crisis,' Robert Redford's 'Truth' to Premiere at Toronto", "Sandra Bullock and David Gordon Green Team on 'Our Brand is Crisis', "Scoot McNairy Joins Sandra Bullock in 'Our Brand is Crisis', "Billy Bob Thornton in Talks to Join Sandra Bullock in 'Our Brand Is Crisis', "Anthony Mackie Joins Sandra Bullock in 'Our Brand is Crisis', "Joaquim de Almeida, Zoe Kazan Join Sandra Bullock in 'Our Brand Is Crisis', "Participant Boards David Gordon Green's 'Our Brand Is Crisis', "The real story of "Our Brand Is Crisis" is how we screwed up Bolivia: Behind the bland Sandra Bullock movie lies another strange-but-true tale of botched American meddling", "Sandra Bullock in Talks to Star in George Clooney-Produced 'Our Brand Is Crisis', "George Clooney's 'Our Brand Is Crisis' sets Metairie casting call", "Louisiana Film TV Production Jobs Hotline September 23, 2014", "Political drama starring A-listers films in Norco", "Reynaldo Pacheco Is The Beating Heart In 'Our Brand Is Crisis', "Sandra Bullock's 'Crisis' Gets Awards Season Release Date", "Our Brand Is Crisis (2015) - Box Office Mojo", "Bradley Cooper, 'The Martian' To Scare Away Sandra Bullock & 'Scouts' At Halloween B.O. 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