Our brand is crisis review

[Westside Steve]

Our brand is crisis

 

Warner Brothers

 

R. 128 min

 

 

 

 

Well I guess it was inevitable. Sometimes when I think about Christmas decorations going up before Halloween gets here I shake my head and wonder...

 

So the election season has fired up over a year before the big event and already the political flicks are hitting the big screen.

 

Actually this film is billed as being from the team that gave us ARGO which was a relatively substantial film and with the newfound respect for Sandra Bullock I was expecting something a little more involved. Actually I think they are trying very hard to be relevant here but you know about best laid plans.

 

Don't misunderstand, I like Sandra Bullock, I really do, but I don't think she's ever exhibited the kind of chops worthy of an Academy Award, particularly in the snooze fest GRAVITY.

 

Here, in producer George Clooney's liberal passion play OUR BRAND IS CRISIS she's Calamity Jane Bodine, a burned-out political consultant returning to the fray for one last campaign. She's been living in a self-imposed exile ever since the harsh reality of politics drove her beyond the limits of her moral compass. Mainly she find out that somebody told a lie to win a political contest. Yeah, I know.

 

This time she's lured out of retirement by the opportunity to help elect the president of Bolivia, a good and honorable man so she has been assured.

 

There's also the enticement to work against her smarmy old nemesis, Pat Candy (Billy Bob Thornton).

 

There are problems with this film from the outset. I'm assuming the director wanted to make the point that Bodine was uncomfortable living in public after her years in the wilderness. Therefore almost the entire first third of the film she's hyperventilating and throwing up everywhere she went. I don't know if someone thought this was humorous but I found it annoying.

 

The next drawback is the fact that someone needed to focus so closely on the message that it went beyond the usual suspension of the belief.

 

I know almost nothing about Bolivian politics but it seems apparent, as with many South American countries, there are a hell of a lot of peasants, and this film wants us to believe their lives will be made significantly better by the election of one of the presidential candidates. Probably not the one Bodine is working for.

 

The candidate, let's call him Pedro (Joaquim de Almeida) that she has been chosen to assist has a checkered past, ties to the United States of America and quite possibly a relationship with the IMF.

 

Frankly I don't know why I should assume that the IMF is some sort of an evil empire but knowing the political slant of the producers I realize the United States of America most certainly is, at least for the purposes of this film.

 

He starts by trailing the polls by a good 30 points and step by step, inch by inch, one dirty trick at a time steadily climbs up the ladder. All the while Jane becomes more and more troubled by her own insincerity and unscrupulous behavior.

 

Actually the turning point here is one that Pedro has created himself.

 

When the campaign bus is stopped and attacked by rebels he gets to speak to the leader and convinces him he'll never make a deal with the IMF.

 

Of course it's this little piece of insincere theater that will propel Pedro over the top.

 

 

And now the circle of disillusionment is unbroken as Jane's idealistic young protege realizes in the end that speech was merely for show.

 

May be rather than to assume that the audience is as outraged by Pedro and what he stands for as they are.

 

I think in order to make this film work they needed more on screen examples of the oppression this candidate stood for. May be an example of "shoot the dog" as you've heard me call it before. All they had to do was set up a rooting interest.

 

But they didn't.

 

C

 

 

WSS

 

 

 

 

 

Westside Steve Simmons