Review: Our Brand is Crisis

A retired political strategist with the nickname ‘Calamity’ Jane Bodine (Sandra Bullock) is pulled back into the political world once again when recommended for a gig working on the strategy team for would-be Bolivian President Castillo (Joaquim de Almeida), who is currently on a steep decline. This will also pit Jane against her most hated rival, Pat Candy (an incredibly sly Billy Bob Thornton) who is quick to remind her of previous failures, to put her off her game. This just spurs Jane on, and before long she has a strategy she thinks could work: Crisis. Anthony Mackie, Ann Dowd, and Scoot McNairy play other members of the team.

 

Given that George Clooney, Grant Heslov, and star Sandra Bullock have producers credits here, one assumes they saw something worthwhile in this 2015 political dramedy from the eclectic David Gordon Green (serious films like “Undertow”, freaking moronic films like the unwatchable “Your Highness”). Supposedly suggested by doco, I have to say I found absolutely nothing new or interesting here myself. There’s nothing here that “Primary Colours” didn’t already do much better, and casting Billy Bob Thornton as Bullock’s rival merely enhanced the unflattering comparison. Scripted by Peter Straughan (the awful “Men Who Stare at Goats”), I’m not saying it’s a total rip-off of “Primary Colours” (though Sandra Bullock is basically playing the Kathy Bates character re-imagined as the lead character), but it certainly doesn’t distinguish itself, either. In fact, elements of the premise remind one of the kind of crappy film a star on a serious downward spiral would go and make in a foreign country on the cheap. Thing is, though, looking at the cast, director, and producers…that’s not what the film actually is. How the hell does this play so poorly?

 

To be honest, I’ve never been a Sandra Bullock fan. To me she’s not an actress, she’s a star, and a modestly appealing one at that. That doesn’t mean she can’t act, but for the most part she chooses ‘star’ vehicles that don’t really require it. I loved her in “Demolition Man” and “Gravity”, but that’s about it, and she certainly didn’t deserve to win the Oscar for her mediocre work in “The Blind Side”. In fact, she probably deserved it for “Gravity”, where she was pretty much the whole show. Her comedic pratfalling just 10 minutes into this pretty much told me we weren’t going to witness greatness from her here. That shit’s getting old, Sandy B. She’s not believable in the early stages of the film where she’s meant to be in a bad state. She makes being a trainwreck ‘cute’. Perky, even. That’s something a ‘star’ does, not an actress. If she were a better actress she’d know the damn difference. She’s mediocre, Anthonie Mackie is wasted, Scoot McNairy surprisingly poor, and veteran villain Joaquim de Almeida miscast in a role that probably should’ve gone to Andy Garcia or Jimmy Smits. Hell, even Javier Bardem could’ve taken a crack at it, surely would’ve given the film a needed energy boost at least. Billy Bob Thornton, looking like James Carville (who he pretty much played in “Primary Colours”, and who was on the other side of the real-life instance that inspired this film) is an instant scene-stealer, but he can’t save this on his own.

 

What in the hell did everyone see in this tired, unfunny, not especially insightful film? The nadir is a scene involving two buses and Bullock mooning someone. Call me old-fashioned, but I think that’s a pretty embarrassing thing for any actress to be doing on screen, let alone a 40ish Oscar-winner. It’s not like this is a sex comedy or something, I wouldn’t mind it in something like “Porky’s” or whatever. I can easily see why this thing flopped. It’s dull, unoriginal, doesn’t seem to know what it wants to be, and isn’t any good at being much of anything. This is a head-scratcher from people who ought to have known (and produced) much better.

 

Rating: C-