The trailer and TV spots for Our Brand Is Crisis are perfect distillations of the film. They are tiny profiles that neither distort nor diminish the film they’re advertising. Unfortunately, they’re also, effectively, the sum total of the film.
Half-assedly related to the documentary about American political strategists Greenberg Carville Shrum manipulating Bolivia’s 2002 election, Our Brand is Crisis attempts to be a nihilistic cynical movie about the American political system, but pulls all of its punches so it could become a Sandra Bullock vehicle.
Sandy Bullock plays “Calamity” Jane, a fictional stand-in for GCS, who had retired into the cold snowy mountains after years of failed American elections. While working as a campaign strategist, she had been a chain-smoking drug-addled alcoholic who was just as off the rails as the campaigns she led. After having a stay in a psych ward, Jane is now living a clean and sober life making pottery far away from the chaos of modern living. When two business associates hire her to run a campaign in Bolivia, Jane has one last chance to redeem her career by winning an election for Castillo, a conservative businessman who had already been ousted from office once before. The clincher? The competition has hired her old foe, Pat Candy (Billy Bob Thornton), as their strategist.
The actual politics of the Bolivian election take a back seat to screenwriter Peter Straughn’s fictionalized battle of the sexes between Jane and Candy. Everything Our Brand is Crisis has to say is surface: American politics are toxic, don’t trust politicians, nobody cares about the actual citizens, the only sin is losing, doing this job eats your soul, etc etc etc. Straughn is drawn to compelling political stories – The Men Who Stare At Goats, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy – but can’t seem to figure out how to plumb their implications without sacrificing his genre hook.
In Crisis, Straughn attempts to plumb the social impact of the election through Eddie (Reynaldo Pacheco), an impoverished intern who believes in the conservative politician because he was hugged as a baby. Eddie takes Jane to a Bolivian barrio, where they proceed to win over his friends through drinking and partying. And…that’s about the extent of Eddie’s story. Well, except for his finale that goes exactly where you’re expecting it.
Jane’s campaign strategy only crystallizes once Castillo is the victim of a protest egging, and punches the protester in the face. Jane concocts a story that Bolivia is in crisis, and that Castillo is a fighter here to lead Bolivia to its next level. It’s all bullshit, of course, but that doesn’t mean it won’t work. Further mudslinging and other crafty double-edged techniques fill in the cracks of her new narrative to fit Castillo.
Director David Gordon Green has clearly taken more than a few notes from Barry Sonnenfeld’s Wag the Dog, letting extreme corruption take on a common everyday feel during Crisis‘ first act. Unfortunately, the end of the film, Green and Straughn wield a sledgehammer to make sure their politics are well known to the audience, without adding any nuance. By the end of the movie, the Sandy Bullock-Redemption Storyline™ becomes so artificial, the whole movie feels like a joke, when really the topic is anything but. Where Manglehorn feels college-student ambitious, Crisis feels workman and ordinary, finding only-occasionally inspired frames amidst a generic movie.
Despite all of its shallow faults, Green keeps Crisis from falling victim into a tiresome pessimism. Our Brand is Crisis is light, fluffy, and skin deep. This is a film which wants us to think it’s endearing and believable for Sandy and her Barrio friends to get drunk and use her bedsheets to fling bobbleheads at Candy’s hotel door. Yet, the full extent of its politics is that Bolivia joining the IMF is the worst thing for the impoverished citizens. Crisis flips what’s important for what will sell to the audience, but unlike Rock the Kasbah, I don’t get a hint that Green thinks this this focus shift is crass. Green and Straughn are trying to give us another The Blind Side, but end up making a mockery of their own movie.
