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. There are also two middle finger displays. 2023's Most Anticipated Sequels, Prequels, and Spin-offs. 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. By what name was Our Brand Is Crisis (2015) officially released in India in English? As one of his first moves as president, Morales unilaterally reversed the terms of Bolivias natural gas contracts with foreign corporations: Instead of the investors getting 82 percent of the profits and the Bolivian state getting 18 percent, it was suddenly the other way around. They reluctantly agree, but the city is in gridlock due to the protests, which are on the verge of becoming riots. She doesnt respond. Montage of the press reporting throughout the day. [6] On September 15, Billy Bob Thornton joined the film,[7] and on September 18, Anthony Mackie joined the cast. The study of crisis management originated with large-scale industrial and environmental disasters in the 1980s. Its very obvious when shes going to do it, so it would be easy for viewers to close their eyes until all the yelling and laughter dies down. A llama is shown getting hit by a car. When shes recruited for a chance to face off in Bolivia against her longtime and similarly depraved rival, Pat Candyportrayed convincingly enough as a stock Billy Bob Thornton character by Billy Bob Thorntonshe signs up. Have they learned nothing? The boys (all adult age) are living alone because their parents have both died. That is, of course, when you can get her out of 'retirement' and give her a good reason to . Jane is so nauseous from her travel and the elevation she leaves and is heard throwing up. [17][18] Filming also took place in the Bonnet Carr Spillway in Norco in St. Charles Parish. [20], In July 2015, Warner Bros. scheduled the film for an October 30, 2015 release, during the awards season. They even resort to publishing photos of their enemy with Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie in the background, so that he has to deny being a Nazi. The protagonist, Jane Bodine a.k.a. At the start, Jane has been out of the consulting game for several years, following a traumatic mayoral race. She meets the campaign team but stays in the background at the first meeting, clearly feeling ill. Its pretty powerful, actually. Old colleague Nell (Ann Dowd) brings young idealistic Ben (Anthony Mackie) up to the woods to coax Jane down to Bolivia, to manage the presidential campaign of a conservative senator whose prior stint as head of that country was pretty authoritarian. Carville and Greenberg won that election for Goni, after shifting the entire theme of his campaign to the crisis mantra, but maybe they should have vetted their candidate a little better. We just want to dive into a pool without having to hold onto our bottoms. Oct. 29, 2015. Finally, she meets with Castillo for their first conversation. Although this is yet another nice white lady who benevolently comes to the aid of a non-white young person (in the case of Our Brand Is Crisis, it's a campaign intern who idolizes Castillo), Bullock shows a lot more shading here than in The Blind Side. Jane meets with Castillo who says shes a liability. She really truly does.). The women of, Sam Levinson and the Weeknd Allegedly Turned, Theres No Red Button You Can Push to Stop. Rivera then repeats the quote Jane told Candy. More fliers are discovered that claim (with pictures) Castillo is a member of a crazy white-robe wearing cult. Yet you really have to read between the lines and dig into the subtext of Straughans screenplay to perceive the issues that drove Boyntons film. When it does, Jane moons the Rivera bus. Nevertheless, his brothers are much more skeptical about Castillo. She comes to realize shes better than that. But if you can be wary of those things, I do recommend this film. [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. Jane wakes up in her hotel room. Not seeing what she highlighted, Candy asks about it. His name is too long with her so she just calls him Eddie. That is now the title of the Bullock movie directed by indie-film veteran David Gordon Green and written by Peter Straughan (Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy), which is also set during a Bolivian presidential campaign and stars Billy Bob Thornton, Anthony Mackie, Scoot McNairy, Ann Dowd and Zoe Kazan as Bullocks rivals or colleagues in the Machiavellian business of reinventing candidates and reshaping public opinion. Beyond needing to adjust to her relocation to La Paz however temporary, Jane knows that she has to transform the thinking of the populace to making them want Castillo as their leader as opposed to changing Castillo to something he inherently is not. Violence: Moderate / Profanity: Heavy / Sex/Nudity: Moderate to heavys. Someone smashes an egg on Castillo, who spectacularly punches the assailant. After this incident, however, Castillo shows the other side of him by being kind to protesters who throw rocks at his bus. From there, Jane uses every trick at her disposal to try and beat Candy. What sealed the deal was that she will be coming up against her long-time arch-nemesis, Pat Candy. While it would have been nice if the supporting characters were just as well developed (Candys entire purpose seems to be to enter a scene, taunt Jane, and then leave), Jane is a compelling figure, and its unfortunate that the film doesnt match her complexity. While Rivera is still speaking aboard a train, Jane poses as a worker for the Rivera campaign and tells the conductor the speech is over. When Bodine realizes that she brought a liar into office, she has the car stopped and leaves to join Eduardo. Candy tells her he knows it was Jane who planted the fliers of Castillos infidelity in order to force Castillo to run a negative campaign. 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. Jane wants to overtake it. Joaquim de Almeida - Castillo. Then Jane figures out a hook: To make Castillo more attractive than the frontrunner (a young, engaged populist who represents hope and change), she has to sell the idea that the country doesnt need someone, well, likable. The problem is that they do such a good job selling this Jane that they do exactly what theyre supposed to do: They make you curious about her. In case the true story behind the baffling and approximately well-intentioned Sandra Bullock star vehicle Our Brand Is Crisis makes any difference, here it is: Way back in the innocent days of 2002 (Im kidding about innocent), the high-powered political consulting firm Greenberg Carville Shrum parachuted into Bolivia to take up the cause of a struggling presidential candidate named Gonzalo Snchez de Lozada, universally known as Goni. Rachel Boynton, a documentary director whose work focuses on ideology, politics and power (her most recent movie, Big Men, is about the global workings of the oil industry), came along and made an extraordinary film about that campaign, whose title was drawn from a telling phrase coined by one of the GCS consultants. Candy reveals it was him (via a friend of a friend) who anonymously suggested to the Castillo campaign to hire Jane. To handle this scandal, Castillo is interviewed on TV and explains it was a visit to his son, who IS a member of the cult, and he had to wear the robe. Despite Sandra Bullocks strong lead performance, David Gordon Greens film cant push a hopeful tone past its depressing reality. Eddie and his brothers join the protests and are shouting angry chants. Calamity Jane Bodine (Bullock) was a vaunted political strategist, but the emotional toll of the campaigns coupled with substance abuse problems forced her into early retirement where she may not be happy, but shes grateful that shes calm. But when youre reviewing a political drama, you have to be careful to pay close attention. Unfortunately, the quote is actually from Joseph Goebbels, Adolf Hitler's minister of propaganda. Among the many achievements of HBOs Veep is its discovery of a new, post-Carville political consultant character, one thats just as cuttingly entertaining but truer to reality. A knock on the door reveals Eddie, saddened and angry, who tells her about the IMF plan. But the filmmakers invent an antagonist of near-mythic stature to make her lust for a win: Billy Bob Thorntons Pat Candy, who works for the leading candidate. The movie opens with a title sequence regarding the main character Jane Bodine (Sandra Bullock) and her rise and fall from hotshot political strategist/image . Jane says that Pat Candy is behind the fliers. Screenwriter Peter Straughans script originally featured a male protagonist, but Bullock makes the role her own, from vomiting into a wastepaper basket and mooning the opposition to shrewdly choreographing an on-air attack of tears for her candidate. He is currently 28 points behind. I need a majority. The American consultants, not knowing the language or the culture of Bolivia, are persuaded by Bodine, a burned out veteran of American politics, to follow a strategy of smear campaigning to make up for their candidate's shortcomings. We root for Jane to win and feel guilty for caring more about the game than the country. Our sophisticated political flimflam could make more inroads than the Marshall Plan. Slate is published by The Slate Group, a Graham Holdings Company. Back on the bus, Castillo explain to Eddie that an effective leader is a father to the people, and that sometimes a father must be strict. He denies being a member of the cult. 2023 Vox Media, LLC. [19] Additional filming occurred in Puerto Rico and Bolivia. Jane invites them out to dinner with the campaign team. When Jane realizes how much she hurt the country, shes so upset that she actually quits her business and joins the protesters. Is it money? Janes conversion, alas, is over-broad and signaled from the start. That kind of consumer response is pretty remarkable, and it also says something about each brand's crisis management strategies. It received mixed reviews, despite Bullock's performance being largely praised, and was a box office disappointment. From that day on, she says, our brand is crisis.. 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. It is a record turnout and at days end, the results are: Castillo 23.5%, Rivera 22.8%, Volasco 21.9%. In David Gordon Green's OUR BRAND IS CRISIS, the film is obviously in existence to point out how politics, no matter the nation, are used in gaining votes from image rather than truth. All rights reserved. She introduces LeBlanc (Zoe Kazan), a young investigator who is hired to dig up dirt on Rivera. "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,. She spends the night in jail. In its best moments, Our Brand Is Crisis is reminiscent of Wag the Dog; it knows how fucked politics is and acts accordingly. When the gunfire stops, the camera moves in on a boy sitting on the steps of a building, his head partly covered by his coat as if hes grabbing a nap. 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. Jane suggests that Castillo reveal everything that could be used against him, but he refuses. Yes, this is a movie where a diabolical character is given the surname Candy, and what can you really say? It is only after Bodine arranges for the distribution of a flyer accusing Castillo of a long-ago affair (and blaming it on the opposition) does she finally get him to agree to smear his opponents. The go-to source for comic book and superhero movie fans. Castillo says its in the past, and that his wife knows about it, but Jane claims the perception will be that hes an adulterer. Another graphic shows the race at 22% for Castillo and 26% for Rivera with 16 days to go. Inspired by the 2005 documentary of the . She moved to a mountain cabin, stopped smoking, got sober, and started doing pottery. The film gives a fictionalized account of the involvement of American political campaign strategists Greenberg Carville Shrum (GCS) in the 2002 Bolivian presidential election. Our Brand Is Crisis still could have been an excellent tale, but told through a soft prism of second chances and good intentions, we can't buy what Green is selling. 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. The rest of the movie is her telling the story of what happened after her resignation. A young man working on the campaign, Eduardo (Reynaldo Pacheco) comes to the rescue of Castillo and ushers him away. Candy says he will be going to overseas for a British campaign. For those who want more detail, I have written a paragraph below containing spoilers. The protest is growing in the city. [11] More casting was also announced, which included Reynaldo Pacheco, Dominic Flores, Louis Arcella, and Octavio Gmez. They plead with him that any negotiations with the IMF (International Monetary Fund) be preceded by a referendum so the people can decide. She will work on the campaign of anybody, provided the money is right. *Sorry, there was a problem signing you up. They plan to frighten the people, with the aim of persuading them to vote for the unsympathetic but known Castillo rather than the younger opposition candidates. Things you buy through our links may earnNew Yorka commission. - Jane: It's like he killed himself rather than appear in our commercial.". A bus race ensues around dangerous bends and cliffs. Thornton is sleek, clammy, and leering. As a result of this, Castillo agrees to start running a negative campaign. You never find out. [22], Our Brand Is Crisis grossed $7 million in North America and $1.6 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $8.6 million, against a budget of $28 million. She reveals she has had mental issues before and suffered from depression. Its educational and leaves you with serious thoughts about political power. Played for laughs? Candys played by Billy Bob Thornton, and his serpentine southern charm and minimalist tonsorial stylings suggest real-life political maven James Carville (and it is perhaps no accident that Thornton played a deep-fried political strategist in Primary Colors, too) who was in the aforementioned documentary. Ben jumps out and yells, get in the car, what are you doing? Castillo's bus is stopped by a group of protesters who don't want the International Monetary Fund in Bolivia. But Boynton has done her own framing: This campaign is a precursor to tragedy. Maybe, kinda. In the mix is a fine supporting cast including a sensational Thornton . OUR BRAND IS CRISIS barely holds together as the story moves from campaign incident to campaign incident. Politics is a dirty business, but Our Brand Is Crisis doesn't stick its hands into the muck sufficiently to be as entertaining or stinging as it could be. All contents 2023 The Slate Group LLC. Our Brand Is Crisis grossed $7 million in North America and $1.6 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $8.6 million, against a budget of $28 million. This email will be used to sign into all New York sites. Copyright 2023 Salon.com, LLC. Jane gets blasted, leaks misinformation, vandalizes Candys room, and sabotages his candidates rallies the way he sabotaged her candidates. The deeply disappointed Eduardo visits Bodine in her hotel; Bodine replies that she is not responsible for Castillo's actions. Jane is goaded by patronizing men into proving herself in ways shes not proud of. 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. After he does this, Castillo gives Eddie his cufflinks to hold, and it is clear Eddie idolizes him. Before I address the message, Ill review the content. She realizes that she was deceived by Castillo, just like she was attempting to deceive the people of Bolivia. Let me know how that goes. Jane then joins the mass of people who are walking toward the city. Walking into the room with the campaign team, she gives a fiery and inspirational speech about how important it is to go negative, and that anybody with a problem with that will be given a set of balls. Negative ads are now running for Castillos campaign. [21] It had a wide release in 2,202 theaters for 21 days. Bodine used to be the best in the game, but an unfortunate series of events during a campaign destroyed her reputation and confidence. All rights reserved. In the city, Eddie is hanging Castillo posters. And yet in David Gordon Greens tale of political fixers, Our Brand Is Crisis, he wants to find hope. Read his answers to our Movie Love Questionnaire here. Cut back to the interview that opened the film. Jane also has to get Castillo to be totally transparent to her to uncover those skeletons that she might need to deal with, being transparent which he may not be willing to be, not realizing that her own skeletons might pop out to play. Candy is outside the hotel in his chauffeur-driven SUV and offers Jane, Ben, and Nell a ride to the airport. LeBlanc discovers Rivera has purchased 27 vehicles with taxpayer money at the cost of about 35-40 vehicles. Vanessa Bryant Settles Helicopter-Crash Photo Lawsuit for $28.85 Million. During the final debate, Bodine cites a quote in a conversation with Candy (knowing that he'll give it to rival candidate Rivera for his speech) saying that "a great man" said it. 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). Glenn Kenny was the chief film critic of Premiere magazine for almost half of its existence. "Our Brand Is Crisis" is both the title of and a line from a new political comedy about American consultants who take over a Bolivian presidential campaign. ( with pictures ) Castillo is a precursor to tragedy he does this, agrees. And are shouting angry chants rest of the consulting game for several years, following a traumatic race. I do recommend this film signing you up hired to dig up on., is over-broad and signaled from the start, jane has been out of the movie is her the. Reveals she has the car stopped and leaves you with serious thoughts about power! 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