Our Brand Is Crisis (Sandra Bullock, Billy Bob Thornton, Anthony Mackie) – Comedy or serious political commentary? Answering this question would have helped this film. When you have Sandy Bullock starring in your movie, given her gift for physical humor, it is hard not to take the comedy turn. In Gravity and The Blind Side, she handled it well, and the audience showed up. Here, director David Gordon Green, with his relatively few feature credits, couldn’t decide. So it is a little of both.
Two well-known American political consultants are engaged by opposing candidates in Bolivia to run presidential campaigns. We are left to believe that the candidate who hired Jane (Bullock) is a good guy and the one represented by Pat (Thornton) is a bad guy. But what we see is the opposite but we buy in. This race seems to be more about the consultants than the candidates. Jane and Pat have squared off before, and Pat always wins. Jane was disgraced in their last confrontation and escaped to a cabin, never to re-enter the political world. But she is lured in.
The comedy begins here. She doesn’t like to fly, suffers from the high altitude in La Paz, and seems unnerved by the change in scenery. Meanwhile, Pat is dapper, cool, and evil as ever. But as the movie evolves and the election gets closer, we see the dirty, ugly parts of politics, regardless of the country. No substance, all form; underhanded, manipulated; never about the populace.
At the end of the day, one of the candidates wins and immediately breaks a campaign promise. GASP!
Frankly, every Sandra Bullock movie is worth seeing. Even truer: every Billy Bob movie is worth seeing. That said, this movie is not nearly up to their previous standards even if there is a hyper-electric campaign to get Sandy another Oscar nomination. She doesn’t deserve it but that doesn’t mean it won’t happen.