Director: David Gordon Green
Distributor: Warner Bros Home Entertainment
Duration: 103 minutes
Our Brand Is Crisis (DVD) – Movie Review
Behind every grand election there’s pretty much always a truckload of promoters or agencies that occupy themselves with proper advertising and campaigns to help a candidate get elected, or at least have their run for their money. While perhaps the most famous election campaigns are the (presidential) elections of the United States, especially with Clinton and Trump clashing nowadays, this movie takes us to Bolivia, where an American team has to help Pedro Castillo win the presidential elections.
Jane (Sandra Bullock) has earned herself the nickname ‘Calamity Jane’, as she is pretty much comparable to a tornado that stirs things up in the political world. She was a renowned expert when it came to election campaigns, but after deciding to go off the grid, she has been leading a peaceful life, somewhere in the middle of nowhere. When all of a sudden Ben (Anthony Mackie) and Nell (Ann Dowd) arrive at her doorstep to ask for her help, namely represent one of the candidates of presidency in Bolivia, she is reluctant at first but then decides to tag along. Sadly, she looks out of it, and not overall interested in Castillo (Joaquin de Almeida), as she thinks he is an arrogant bastard. Nonetheless, when all of a sudden Pat Candy (Billy Bob Thornton) shows up, as the representative of one of the other candidates, things get personal. Not only does Pat mock her every chance he gets, he has done her wrong in the past, and thus she decides to properly fight back with whatever she’s got, and it becomes clear she is a vicious fighter when the time calls for it.
Overall the pace of the movie isn’t what you’d expect of a flick that calls itself a comedy (and somewhere along the lines a drama as well). You’ll be treated to a handful of ‘amusing’ scenes that aren’t truly made to let you laugh out loud. Nonetheless, the pacing is quite pleasant, as you’ll slowly see Jane get her mojo back, intertwined with the aforementioned funny scenes, but all in all everything revolves around politics, which you probably either love or hate. All that aside, the necessary information is properly passed to the viewer, with enough time in-between to come to your senses and enjoy whatever is happening onscreen.
Even though this movie tends to be a hostile duet between Sandra Bullock and Billy Bob Thornton, each to get their candidate elected, there’s a decent amount of faces that add a certain layer of quality to this title. Anthony Mackie, who is now in the spotlight as Falcon from the Marvel universe, does a surprisingly convincing job of being a persona in the political world. Joaquin de Almeida is also a heavyweight in the acting world and he does a superb job in playing the candidate around which this movie revolves, Castillo. Overall things are convincing, which is rather important for a movie such as this.
As expected this DVD release comes with no extra features and it didn’t really need any featurettes to further explore the content the movie presented us with. Nonetheless, seeing the movie still calls itself a comedy, a gag reel or something along those lines would have been nice. Another thing that could have used a bit of extra information is actually the topic of the movie, or why they settled on a story that revolves around Bolivia.
Conclusion
Our Brand Is Crisis might feel a bit deceiving as it marks itself as a comedy, which in reality isn’t quite correct. Nonetheless, the movie is certainly worth the watch, to see how election campaigns actually work, albeit that some aspects are probably exaggerated in this movie. It also shows that these ‘fights’ are often more dirty than they are about what truly matters, namely the welfare of the people. That being said, if you have a mild love for politics, or Sandra Bullock, this movie will prove entertainment for the evening.
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