Our Brand Is Crisis
Our Brand Is Crisis
R | 30 October 2015 (USA)
Our Brand Is Crisis Trailers

Based on the documentary "Our Brand Is Crisis", this feature focuses on the use of American political campaign strategies in South America.

Reviews
Nonureva Really Surprised!
Supelice Dreadfully Boring
SparkMore n my opinion it was a great movie with some interesting elements, even though having some plot holes and the ending probably was just too messy and crammed together, but still fun to watch and not your casual movie that is similar to all other ones.
Erica Derrick By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.
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.
Michael Ledo The film claims to be "inspired by true events" but is closer to a work of total fiction and is designed to make us look at our own candidates in an election year who claim there is a crisis and they are the only ones who can fix it.The movie is entertaining as the quirky and unorthodox Jane Bodine (Sandra Bullock) is hired by a Bolivian senator in a presidential bid. Castillo (Joaquim de Almeida) is "not trustworthy, not likable, stuck up little a-hole." He also has a smirk and connections to the IMF. Bodine takes on the job because her opponent is managed by Pat Candy (Billy Bob Thornton) a master strategist who has beaten Bodine on several occasions.Castiilo's lack of charm is changed into being a forceful individual who can get the job done in what is now a "time of crisis." Bodine has a history with Candy as the campaign becomes personal. This is an interesting behind the scenes view of campaigns filled with humor and universal political themes.Good job Bullock.Guide: F-bomb. No sex or nudity. Sex talk.
TonyMontana96 (Originally reviewed: 06/01/2017) Here is a picture with mistaken identity, is it trying to be a comedy or a drama? Nonetheless it's adequately passable and I have no regrets having seen it. Sandra Bullock is very good as per usual and so is Billy Bob Thornton who sports a bold shiny head as her election team's staff rival. These two actors play off of each other rather nicely and the performances all round are somewhat decent as well, this includes Anthony Mackie, Joaquim de Almeida and Zoe Kazan and Renaldo Pacheco; although I did not care for the characters of Scoot McNairy and Ann Dowd. Furthermore I enjoyed a couple of well put together scenes such as when Bullock goes a little crazy and seems to be having a lot fun, such as pranking Thornton's character and assaulting a police officer while intoxicated. Unfortunately the picture has problems though; such as a real lack of decent jokes including an animal being struck by a moving vehicle, where Bullock's character says "it's like he would rather kill himself, rather than be in one of our commercials", this was not to my liking as they have to use an animal's suffering to get some cheap laughs which ultimately fell flat just like a good few jokes in this picture. Moreover I didn't care for some real bland dialogue either and not knowing whether it believes itself to be a comedy or a serious picture which I'm positive I already previously stated. However the real problem is the last 10 to 15 minutes which are stupid, meaningless and make little sense and sum up the picture as it truly is, a mediocre, if passable Picture that works more as a drama than a comedy but all in all, it does not work well enough to deserve a recommendation.
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."
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