Bodine and her crew join Candy on the way to the airport. Let me know how that goes. Jane then joins the mass of people who are walking toward the city. Our Brand Is Crisis grossed $7 million in North America and $1.6 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $8.6 million, against a budget of $28 million. In Bolivia, altitude sickness (at 12 thousand feet, La Paz is the worlds highest capital) and sickness with the candidate nearly drive her away. Her words are intercut with footage of newspaper headlines and, oddly, shots of Bullocks hands molding clay at a pottery wheel. [21] It had a wide release in 2,202 theaters for 21 days. He resides in Atlanta with his wife and their dog Jack. Password must be at least 8 characters and contain: As part of your account, youll receive occasional updates and offers from New York, which you can opt out of anytime. All this makes for mid-grade entertainment value, at best. Although I hasten to add that even by the standards of Bullocks implacable, steel-jawed underacting this is a dull performance. Los Angeles County said all litigation over the crash has now been resolved. She is approached by Candy, who tells her hes surprised shes working on an unwinnable campaign. They make a sling shot out of clothes and shoot something that splatters against Candys window across the foyer. The film was screened in the Special Presentations section of the 2015 Toronto International Film Festival. As the site's Chief Film Critic, he has authored hundreds of reviews and covered major film festivals including the Toronto International Film Festival and the Sundance Film Festival. [9] On October 10, Joaquim de Almeida and Zoe Kazan joined the cast, with Almeida playing Castillo, the former president of Bolivia, and Kazan playing a young woman who finds dirt on political candidates. She tells Nell she needs to pull some string with her contacts at the Bolivian State Department, in order to take votes from Castillo, and give them to Volasco (another candidate). At least not right away. When it does, Jane moons the Rivera bus. The image of that boy haunts Our Brand Is Crisis, so that the U.S. strategists who do a bang-up job of getting the wrong man elected to the wrong place at the wrong time look like agents of catastrophe.. Nevertheless, his brothers are much more skeptical about Castillo. The police arrive and the demonstration quickly turns into a riot. Privacy Policy and Theres no redemption to be found with the people who are ruining liveswho have no belief in politicians or voters; people who have basically given up on humanity and play with public policy like a kid with a loaded gun. [10] On October 13, 2014, Participant Media announced that they would co-finance the film with Warner, while Jeffrey Skoll and Jonathan King would executive produce, along with Bullock and Stuart M. Filmcast "Our Brand is Crisis" November 6, 2015 Laura Seaman Features , Filmcast , Movies [vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Join Laura Seaman as she reviews " Our Brand is Crisis " and previews " Spectre " and " The Peanuts Movie " on this week's episode of Filmcast. [8] On September 24, Ann Dowd joined the film. Thats the problem with focusing a story on the diabolical strategist, the one mythical figure in this godforsaken political system whos got it all figured out. She looks across the large foyer to see Candy sitting outside his room. The 2005 Our Brand Is Crisis was the second documentary about Carvilles political work, following 1993s The War Room, in addition to Carvilles dramatic acting rsumand cable news career. [22], Our Brand Is Crisis grossed $7 million in North America and $1.6 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $8.6 million, against a budget of $28 million. He cant reconcile that her success also makes her a bad person. Calamity Jane Bodine (Bullock) was a vaunted political strategist, but the emotional toll of the campaigns coupled with substance abuse problems forced her into early retirement where she may not be happy, but shes grateful that shes calm. He does exactly that, to Janes delight, when explaining hes not close to his son, but he wishes he was, with tears in his eyes. She tells him shes going home tomorrow. He suggests maybe later they can go out. Our Brand Is Crisis still could have been an excellent tale, but told through a soft prism of second chances and good intentions, we can't buy what Green is selling. Jane says it will be an honor. The crisis, when it came . He says the people in the village dont understand that yet. It needs a strongman who can handle a crisis. George Clooney and Grant Heslov produced. Jane has accepted the offer and their plane lands in La Paz, Bolivia, which has an elevation of nearly 12,000 feet above sea level. Not all movies preach, for example, action movies are usually more about the entertainment of watching good triumph over evil. All rights reserved. Jane says its just a carousel and she was going around and around. Vanessa Bryant Settles Helicopter-Crash Photo Lawsuit for $28.85 Million. Andrew O'Hehir is executive editor of Salon. It already has. The interviewer says she's been known by many names, most notably "Calamity Jane". In her eyes, her job is done. [6] On September 15, Billy Bob Thornton joined the film,[7] and on September 18, Anthony Mackie joined the cast. Its cute for a while. Nell explains that Castillos opponent, Rivera, has hired her old arch nemesis, Pat Candy (played by Billy Bob Thornton). LeBlanc finds even more dirt on Rivera, but Jane tells her to focus everything on finding dirt on Castillo. But the main mystery to me was the message of this film. She is then seen in the middle of the protest, and sees Eddie. We root for Jane to win and feel guilty for caring more about the game than the country. They reluctantly agree, but the city is in gridlock due to the protests, which are on the verge of becoming riots. That kind of consumer response is pretty remarkable, and it also says something about each brand's crisis management strategies. Our Brand is Crisis hits a lot of clunky notes and the end is unforgivably cornball, but its still one of the liveliest political black comedies Ive seen in a while. Our Brand Is Crisis Review: Champions of Cynicism | TIFF 2015. It starts out with big promises and ends up with jackshit happening.". Plot out uproarious long-shot tricks against his opponents that always seem to work out even better than hoped? Well, this is the rambunctious comedy version of Our Brand Is Crisis, framed by director David Gordon Green and the British writer Peter Straughan not with a dead boy but the personal odyssey of a fictional character. Politics takes to cynicism like shit to a cesspool. At a Rivera campaign stop, Jane is seen talking to Candy. You never find out. The campaign advisors are telling Castillo he needs to meet with the people and be seen as one of the people. She doesnt believe hell catch her and he expresses disbelief. The movie opens with a title sequence regarding the main character Jane Bodine (Sandra Bullock) and her rise and fall from hotshot political strategist/image . Not seeing what she highlighted, Candy asks about it. [17][18] Filming also took place in the Bonnet Carr Spillway in Norco in St. Charles Parish. Loosely based on true events, Our Brand Is Crisis, follows Jane Bodine (Sandra Bullock) and her campaign team when they are hired to help Pedro Castillo win a presidential election in Bolivia. Once a political idealist, she increasingly was a strategist for hire outwardly not caring about the actual politics of her boss. Mick LaSalle is the film critic for the San . *Sorry, there was a problem signing you up. When shes recruited for a chance to face off in Bolivia against her longtime and similarly depraved rival, Pat Candyportrayed convincingly enough as a stock Billy Bob Thornton character by Billy Bob Thorntonshe signs up. [5] On September 11, Scoot McNairy was added to the cast. She insists Castillo express regret, but not to apologize. Goni was in effect the candidate of the Washington consensus, the guy who would bring a small, fractious and deeply divided country into the established international economic order. [13] Peter Straughan was set to write the script, with Clooney attached as a potential director and star for the film, about the 2002 Bolivian presidential election's campaign by James Carville's Washington, D.C.-based political consulting firm Greenberg Carville Shrum,[14][15] which was hired by candidate Gonzalo Snchez de Lozada. Our Brand is Crisis hits a lot of clunky notes and the end is unforgivably cornball, but it's still one of the liveliest political black comedies I've seen in a while. [16], On August 21, 2014, Bullock's casting was confirmed, playing a retired political consultant called 'Calamity' Jane Bodine, and David Gordon Green was set to direct the film. Jane is on the set but is only seen in the background on a lounge chair, still looking unwell. Its yoked to an impoverished Bolivian teenager who believesdespite the angry effusions of his brother and friends in their hillside slumthat Castillo is sincere in trying to bring about economic equality. Castillo wins the vote by a small margin. Terms of Service apply. Lets Do the Thing: How Online Were You in February 2023? Back on the bus, Castillo explain to Eddie that an effective leader is a father to the people, and that sometimes a father must be strict. But it seems as though screenwriter Peter Straughan and director David Gordon Green realized near the end that theyd written a feature-length film celebrating consultants ability to install a lying, oligarchic, IMF-beholden stooge to a South American presidency, and decided they ought to wrap things up more palatably. They plan to frighten the people, with the aim of persuading them to vote for the unsympathetic but known Castillo rather than the younger opposition candidates. Any empathy the audience feels for the nauseous Bodine is likely explained by . Jane wants to overtake it. "Our Brand Is Crisis" is both the title of and a line from a new political comedy about American consultants who take over a Bolivian presidential campaign. Jane highlights something in the book. Eddie is delivering a framed photograph to now President-Elect Castillos Senate offices. Someone smashes an egg on Castillo, who spectacularly punches the assailant. After this incident, however, Castillo shows the other side of him by being kind to protesters who throw rocks at his bus. Policy doesnt even enter into the conversation; its more about scoring points by making your opponent look like a Nazi sympathizer simply by virtue of a doctored photograph. The campaign believes Castillo should apologize as soon as possible but Jane disagrees. You want to know how the Janes of the world happen. Fliers are discovered, authored by the La Paz Grassroots that say Castillo had a three year affair. Our Brand is Crisis was one of these pleasant surprises. He is currently 28 points behind. Negative ads are now running for Castillos campaign. A one-stop-shop for all things video games. I found the film to be very interesting, and all the cast put on some of their best performances Ive seen. Digital rental or purchase allows you to instantly stream and download to watch anywhere and anytime on your favorite devices. This is yet another film that could have been PG (maybe PG-13 due to a mooning scene) with a cleaner script. As one of his first actions, he invites the IMF into Bolivia, thereby breaking his promise. I have to rate it Offensive, due to its foul language, several blasphemies, and Sandra Bullocks bare hiny. Bullock plays Calamity Jane Bodine, a legendary practitioner of the dark political arts who comes out of semi-retirement to navigate the hapless ex-president back to the top job. Some said it was staunchly communist. Loosely based on true events, "Our Brand Is Crisis," follows Jane Bodine (Sandra Bullock) and her campaign team when they are hired to help Pedro Castillo win a presidential election in Bolivia. Bodines character loosely channels celebrity political consultant James Carville, one of the Americans who worked on the 2002 Bolivian campaign and a consistent fascination of Hollywood. Candy goes on to tell Jane, If you fight with monsters too long, you become a monster. Jane later says that shell kill herself if she loses to Candy again (though this appears to be hyperbole) She has lost every election against him. Unfortunately, the quote is actually from Joseph Goebbels, Adolf Hitler's minister of propaganda. Jane is elated and tells the communication team to talk to the press and inform them Rivera just used a quote from Joseph Goebbels, the head Nazi propaganda minister. She reveals she has had mental issues before and suffered from depression. Crisis management examples are easy to find these days: We've seen Uber lose 200,000 users in the wake of #DeleteUber and United lose $800 million in value in just a few hours. The film stars Sandra Bullock, Scoot McNairy, Billy Bob Thornton, Anthony Mackie, Ann Dowd and Joaquim de Almeida. After he does this, Castillo gives Eddie his cufflinks to hold, and it is clear Eddie idolizes him. "Our Brand Is Crisis" is a fictionalized treatment of the 2005 documentary of the same name, which focused on Bill Clinton's former campaign manager James Carville. Castillo is frustrated and wants to hear what Jane has planned for the campaign. Click here for all of our TIFF 2015 coverage thus far or peruse links to our reviews below: Matt Goldberg has been an editor with Collider since 2007. And in the real Bolivian election of 02, there was no rivalry between warring American spin doctors working for different candidates, because Goni was the only candidate who got that kind of help, in clear preference to his populist opponents on both the right and left. [24], On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 35% based on 147 reviews, with an average rating of 5.3/10. The message I got from this movie was very positive. There's only one wrong in this, only one, and that is losing!". So I knew that, in this case, I would just have to find out for myself. They just decided to be ingratiating and sentimental. The R-rating is because of the language. She showed how American marketing techniques never before used in that region steered a desperate country towards a rich, arrogant former president Gonzalo Snchez de Lozada (Goni), who proved catastrophically out of touch. [3] The film opened on October 30, 2015, alongside Burnt and Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse. Reluctantly enlisted to help elect the unlikable bully Castillo (Joaquim de Almeida), Jane gets the bit between her teeth when she discovers that her arch-rival, Pat Candy (Billy Bob Thornton), is running the oppositions campaign. When the gunfire stops, the camera moves in on a boy sitting on the steps of a building, his head partly covered by his coat as if hes grabbing a nap. "Wake up, this is war. Ben admires a shiny dark bowl but Nell takes it from him. The website's critical consensus reads, "Our Brand Is Crisis offers sporadic amusement and benefits from a talented cast, but ultimately lacks enough of a bite to add much of interest to the political satire genre. Whats ultimately most frustrating is the evidence that the makers of this movie were fully capable of creating something as smart and ruthless as its lead character. It's a game that has a real impact on people's lives, but a game nonetheless. This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Principal photography began on September 29, 2014, in New Orleans, Louisiana. However it is better and more gratifying to win the heart of a nation and keep it. Candy gives her a condescending compliment and tells her he plans to pleasure himself thinking about her when he returns home. Slate is published by The Slate Group, a Graham Holdings Company. Later at her hotel room, she is still nauseous from the elevation. Thats not just naive to the point of idiocy. The American consultants, not knowing the language or the culture of Bolivia, are persuaded by Bodine, a burned out veteran of American politics, to follow a strategy of smear campaigning to make up for their candidate's shortcomings. During the debate, Nell observes how charming Rivera is, while the team watches stage left. She needs a cigarette, so she walks out the door into a large open foyer. "[25] On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 53 out of 100, based on 35 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". This Friday, Sandra Bullock assumes the role in Our Brand Is Crisis, a mostly satirical take on a 2005 documentary of the same name about American political consultants conquest of a Bolivian election. GCS brings in Jane Bodine to manage the campaign in Bolivia--battling her arch-nemesis, the opposition's political consultant Pat Candy. Power? Our Brand Is Crisis (2015) Rated R for language including some sexual references. Um, yes. February 27, 2023. ------------------------------------------. There are dozens of pottery jars and bowls covering the walls. [27] Peter Debruge from Variety thought that Jane Bodine, played by Bullock, "is easily one of the best female roles of the last 10 years,"[28] while Benjamn Lee from The Guardian wrote that "Bullock seems blissfully unaware of the films faults and delivers a performance that expertly plays on her strengths - her comic timing, wasted in lesser, plane-ready comedies, is on top form and she imbues her neurotic character with more than the thinly sketched quirks provided on the page; she commands a room when needed, perfects scenes of physical comedy and even turns a climax of forced sentiment into something poignant and believable"; he concluded that "while the film is patchy, Bullock's brand is confidently crisis-free". They then shoot the head of the Rivera doll Candy had left, and it breaks his window. If youve been following the drama in the House, the inability of most every Republican presidential candidate to lift off, or really any news from American politics over the last 10 or 239 years, you might have noticed that politics is difficult. There are 12 misuses of god, Jesus (1), Jesus Christ (1), hell (3) and d*mn (3). On a scale of laminated-eyebrow drama to Lemon Lady Secrets. Nevertheless, theres not much reason for you to take my word over theirs. He has written for a host of other publications and resides in Brooklyn. Eventually Eddie sees her and they make eye contact. Politics is a dirty business, but Our Brand Is Crisis doesn't stick its hands into the muck sufficiently to be as entertaining or stinging as it could be. But the filmmakers invent an antagonist of near-mythic stature to make her lust for a win: Billy Bob Thorntons Pat Candy, who works for the leading candidate. This is a competent film that shows how foxy political campaigns can be. She doesnt respond. It also sets up a Hollywood ending that all but wrecks the movie. "Crisis management is the process by which an organization deals with a disruptive and unexpected event that threatens to harm the organization or its stakeholders. As one of his first moves as president, Morales unilaterally reversed the terms of Bolivias natural gas contracts with foreign corporations: Instead of the investors getting 82 percent of the profits and the Bolivian state getting 18 percent, it was suddenly the other way around. Maybe its time to put it out to pasture. Ideology? There is only one wrong thing to do, she says: Losing. [2/4], The effort by Our Brand Is Crisis director David Gordon Green and writer Peter Straughan to turn the 2005 documentary of the same name into a light comedy with touches of romance and political hijinks leave the fictional version a poor candidate in the box office race. Another graphic shows the race at 22% for Castillo and 26% for Rivera with 16 days to go. 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