Rating: 3 stars
Director: David Gordon Green
Actors: Sandra Bullock, Billy Bob Thornton
Run time: 108 mins
Our Brand is Crisis is as much a sports movie as a satire about the Americanisation of a presidential campaign in Bolivia. Jane (Sandra Bullock) is the disgraced coach/political consultant banished from the profession for an accusation we don’t know is true or not. After years in hibernation, she reluctantly makes a return to the arena. Instead of home turf USA, it is an alien, exotic South America country that she chooses. But the challenge is the same old one -- her arch nemesis Pat Candy (Billy Bob Thornton), with whom she has a history.
Given its faithfulness to the formula, you know where the film is heading. But thankfully Our Brand is Crisis doesn’t feel formulaic because of the droll humour and the off-handedness with which director David Gordon Green treats it.
It helps that at its centre are two actors who excel at demonstrating the abovementioned qualities. Thornton’s Candy is the Moriarty to Jane’s Sherlock Holmes. At one level, they are both terribly impressed with each other. Candy, who specialises in political guile with a perpetual smirk on his face, has a mystery around him and he probably even sexually fancies Jane. They both play it dirty, doing unethical, immoral things to pip one another to the post. She doesn’t believe in Pedro Gallo, her controversial, rich elite candidate who doesn’t have a connect with the people. But it’s a personal fight for revenge against Candy, the man behind her downfall. But Jane also has a larger agenda -- that of redemption, of doing the right thing.
The political campaign, with all its dirty tricks and the American-in-third-world-country humour is entertaining. The director’s touches of absurdity, highlighted during the shooting of a commercial involving Gallo and a llama, works well. Scenes like these off-set the familiar feeling of template gags. Like the drunken attack at the opponent’s hotel room or a juvenile bus race in which Jane pulls off a stunt to bring her team together.
All the while, you kind of forget about the question that popped in your head somewhere when it began. What happens to Jane’s redemption, about doing the right over the wrong? By the time you get your answers the film lets go of its satirical tones and becomes serious – it feels easy and convenient but not emotionally satisfying.
Yet, Our Brand is Crisis is a decently enjoyable fare that is completely watchable for the lead performances, dry humour and the formula done well.
