Our Brand is Crisis is Hollywood’s answer to the Chilean movie No (2012), in which an advertising executive brings American-style marketing slick to a national plebiscite campaign against dictator Augusto Pinochet. David Gordon Green’s black comedy has another, more direct source: Rachel Boynton’s 2005 documentary of the same name, which detailed the efforts of American campaign managers in sealing the victory of Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada as Bolivia’s President.
One of the key pieces of advice that de Lozada successfully translated into a winning vote was to harp on negativity and depict his country as being mired in a crisis that only he could fix. Sounds familiar? The movie botches up its insights into the morally ambiguous nature of electioneering and the manipulation of public sentiment in the pursuit of power, but there is enough wit, intelligence and bile to savour in Peter Straughan’s screenplay for anybody interested in the business of elections.
Unlike the documentary, the movie has a female protagonist, Jane Bodine (Sandra Bullock), who has an even score of wins and losses and problems with alcohol and depression. Jane is pulled out of self-imposed retirement by her former colleague Nell (Ann Dowd), who knows which button to push to persuade Jane to become the strategist for Presidential candidate Pedro Castillo (Joaquim de Almeida). The campaign for Castillo’s rival is being managed by Jane’s bitter rival Pat (Billy Bob Thornton), which is reason enough for Jane to overcome altitude sickness and the feeling that her client has already lost the battle to schlep across to Bolivia.
Jane takes her time getting into the campaign, which allows Green to set up the other characters, including media manager Rich (Scoot McNairy) and campaign manager Ben (Anthony Mackie). Like the crisis that she advises Castillo to harp on, Jane too comes into her own only after it seems that Castillo has lost the perception battle. She is matched every step of the way in the dirty tricks department by Pat, and his attempts to constantly sexualise their encounters allows the movie to highlight the challenges faced by women in politics.
Jane is no angel – far from it, and Sandra Bullock does a brilliant job of conveying the tensions, anxieties, and moral dilemmas faced by her character. Bullock’s superb balancing act between comedy and wisdom and the fierce intelligence she brings to her character is one of the most winning elements of Our Brand is Crisis. Bullock is backed admirably by the rest of the cast, especially Thornton and Dowd. Straughan’s razor-sharp dialogue has the quality of screwball comedy, and it’s a pity that Green slackens the pace every so often and lets scenes roll on for longer than they should.
Our Brand is Crisis is overstretched even at just 107 minutes, but it packs in enough of a cutting critique of electioneering chicanery. However, the salutary message that spin, rather than politics, is the villain, is unearned. The Hollywood-mandated happy ending is drenched in an idealism that isn't evident in the rest of the narrative.
