Our Brand Is Crisis

Synopsis: “Calamity” Jane Bodine (Sandra Bullock) is a hot-shot political strategist for hire who has retired to a cabin in the snow-covered woods and her pottery wheel in an attempt to cleanse herself of the moral turpitude of politics. She is coaxed out of retirement by a former colleague (Ann Dowd) and heads down to Bolivia to manage the presidential campaign for a struggling conservative senator, Castillo (Joaquim de Almeida). The bait she bites on is that she will be pitted against her arch-enemy Pat Candy (Billy Bob Thornton) with whom she has unresolved issues.

Given that the producers of this film, George Clooney and Grant Heslov, have brought us the substantial political dramas, The Ides Of March (2011) and Good Night, and Good Luck (2005) and its writer Peter Straughan, has strong credits such as The Men Who Stare At Goats (2005), which was directed by Heslov and starred Clooney, you’ve got to wonder what went wrong with Our Brand Is Crisis, a political satire which slips on its own slickness.  

The obvious scapegoat is director David Gordon Green. He has a quality C.V. at the indie end of the spectrum with films such as Joe and Prince Avalanche (both 2013) and seems like an inexplicable choice for director (he comes complete with his regular composer, David Wingo) of this mainstream production despite the fact that he’s clearly a skilled helmer who has previously successfully crossed over with the multiplex comedy, Pineapple Express (2008).

That’s all that you need to know about the plot as the way it is set up indicates exactly where the story is going to go.  Which it does. Knowing the destination isn’t necessarily a bad thing if the journey is engaging. Which in this case it isn’t. After initially succumbing to altitude sickness, once Bodine encounters Candy in person she suddenly snaps into action and starts turning around Castillo’s campaign, intermittently quoting the likes of Sun-Tzu, Machiavelli and Joseph Goebbels while anecdotal wisdom from the annals of political history fly thick and fast.  If predictability is one thing, the incongruous comedy turns (one scene involves a bus chase through the jungle and Bodine’s bare buttocks ) simply trivialize the film’s satirical aspirations.  

The dirty deeds perpetrated by both Bodine and Candy account for the real fun of the film and are demonic as they are have enough plausibility to enough to be scary. Had these stratagems been sustained by some development of the personal dynamic between the pair it might have been enough to make the film recommendable.  The coverage of their relationship however is largely limited to Candy periodically sidling up to Bodine as a bald-headed, preening self-styled Mephistopheles and goading her into ever more monstrous acts in order to best him. Underlying  this is a sexual tension which sadly does not come to fruition whilst a late attempt to introduce some psychological profiling for her comes out of nowhere and as quickly recedes back into it. And just to add a bit more to the supposed crowd-pleasing package there is a redemptive ending which takes us back to the pottery wheel we saw at the beginning.

Whoever was to blame, Our Brand In Crisis which according to its credits was “inspired” by the 2005 documentary of the same name, is so formulaic in execution that in spite of the on-the-money performances from Bullock (who is credited as an executive producer) and Thornton, one feels positively uncomfortable in giving oneself up to its too easy charms.

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