SimonJack "Our Brand is Crisis" has some slight value. It's portrayal of the chaos in the elections of many third world countries comes very close to what one often sees in the news. The focus of this film, though, is on the paid professionals and teams who work on the strategies for campaign publicity, politicking and vote getting. Watching this film, one has a sense of the Hessians who were the hired professional soldiers who served and fought during the colonial days for Great Britain. Like the Hessians before them, these pol-pros don't care about the people. Nor do they necessarily have to care for their candidate. They are in the game for one thing - to win. And many of them will do anything to win, however dirty, illegal or immoral. One can't imagine why Sandra Bullock wanted to, or would make this film. It's not a very pretty product, and certainly not entertaining. Billy Bob Thornton plays a crass, crude, and crooked jerk. It's a type of role he seems to be drawn to since "Bad Santa" of 2003. This isn't a film that most would enjoy.

adonis98-743-186503 In 2002, Bolivian politician Pedro Gallo hires American James Carville's political consulting firm, Greenberg Carville Shrum, to help him win the 2002 Bolivian presidential election. GCS brings in Jane Bodine to manage the campaign in Bolivia. Battling her arch nemesis, the opposition's political consultant Pat Candy, Bodine successfully uses American political campaign strategies to lead Gallo to victory against Victor Rivera. With a fantastic performance by Sandra Bullock and a good supporting cast Our Brand Is Crisis dives into the heart of Politics and shows in a perfect way how a Politician takes power and when he finally wins he lets his people and his country down.

Robert J. Maxwell This story of a political race in Bolivia didn't get much ballyhooed and I wasn't expecting much. Neither Billy Bob Thornton nor Sandra Bullock are unknown quantities, so we have an idea of their range. And who knows anything about Bolivia? Who could find it on a map? What is interesting about Bolivia, except for the cocaine traffic and the Aymara natives who have a reputation among anthropologists for being the most nasty people you could study? Well we can forget all of that anyway because in the frame provided by this movie the country's name shouldn't be Bolivia but rather "Bolivia." It about the stressful and demeaning business of electoral politics and the toll it takes on its practitioners."Primary Colors," about such a race in the US, was released in 1998 and one of the chief questions raised was, "Should we go negative?" Oh, we've come a long way, Baby. It would be a stunning revelation now if anyone asked, "Shouldn't we say something positive?" The negative approach shown in this film is in no way subtle. It's not surgically applied. Someone handed the writers and director a meat ax. Here are some of the tricks, so vile that they never even occurred to me. You find some filthy group like the Ubermenschen of America, contribute some money in their name to the opposition candidate, and then publicize the contribution. Simple.You can also throw all sorts of accusations at the opponent, no matter how ridiculous, and then wait until the lies take their toll or the opponent is forced to publicly deny them. It's a win win, as the Swiftboat movement demonstrated.The rumors -- so ready for contagion in this internet age -- don't even have to be declarative statement. They can contaminate the media even if they're phrased as questions. "Are Saddam's WMDs Now in Syria?" That's a real one. Here's one I just made up. "Is the Pope Really a Transgender?" Catches your attention, doesn't it? The beauty of negative campaigning is that none of it needs to be founded in fact. It only needs to be fed to a cooperative media until it becomes part of the public's data base, at least the data base shared by a certain sector of social space. And it needs to be swallowed whole by that sector. A fan told Adlai Stevenson, "Every thinking person will vote for you." Stevenson replied, "That's not enough. I need a majority."That anecdote, by the way, is one of several sprinkled throughout the dialog, both by the somber, cynical Sandra Bullock, and the bald, cynical Billy Bob Thornton, two opposites who understand and get along quite well with one another, rather like Mary Matalin and James Carville. The juicy lines don't all have to do with politics. Thornton to Bullock: "You know, when I leave here and go home I'm going to spend an hour pleasuring myself thinking of you."Two performances are worth extra mention. I can't recall a better one from Sandra Bullock. She's no longer a kid. She brings a darkly burnished quality to the role. Her default posture is a grim stance with her arms folded across her chest, a fleshy wall between her milieu and her heart. Zoe Kazan is quite good as translator. She doesn't get much space and except for an oddly pretty face would be background instead of figure. I just like her because of the breathless vigilance she brought to her few minutes on screen as a minion in "Fracture." Despite a last-minute attempt to provide some uplift, it's rather a bitter movie. Bullock compares politics to advertising. "You convince people they want something they don't need, you sell it to them, and you make a profit from it."

eddie_baggins As a big fan of director David Gordon Green due to his unique approach and memorable films like Pineapple Express and Joe, as well as the fantastically irreverent HBO comedy classic Eastbound and Down, I was willing to put aside all the negative reactions aimed at Green's latest big screen venture (or direct to disc here in Australia) Our Brand is Crisis and hopefully enjoy my time in his Bolivian set political satire, but sadly the negative response to this unengaging experience was entirely warranted.Perhaps the most "normal" film Green has ever produced, Crisis sees the sometime indie (Prince Avalanche) sometime mainstream filmmaker (eww Your Highness and The Sitter) restrain himself other than a few brief moments of random occurrences (an escaped lama and a dance scene that will remind many of Kenny Powers dance moves) and it's to the detriment of Crisis's based on a true story tale that Green can't inject his usual flavour to the tale of political campaigns and truth and lies as the film needed an extra boost of originality and energy its name cast can't deliver.At one stage billed as a possible star vehicle for Sandra Bullock to once more feature at the Academy Awards ceremony, Crisis gives Bullock the seemingly award baiting role as presidential campaign manager with a number of personnel issues "Calamity" Jane but Bullock can't save the film despite her commitment to the cause and while Green is usually a fine commander of the support cast he wastes potentially interesting side characters in the form of Anthony Mackie's barely noticeable Ben, Scoot McNairy's highly strung Buckley and Billy Bob Thornton's bald shining dome in the form of Jane's rival campaign manager Pat Candy.It almost seems as if the cast didn't know what they were aiming for, dark political satire? Sombre political statement maker? Or perhaps even a cautionary tale of America getting involved in things they shouldn't well be involved in? Missing the mark by quite a large margin, Our Brand is Crisis is easily Green's weakest project in sometime that so easily could've been something quite special had its potential been realised in any number of facets and in wasting a fine cast in a tale that's anything but engaging, this awkward film is highly unlikely to score well in the polls.1 ½ escaped lamas out of 5