The film claims to be "inspired by true events" but is closer to a work of total fiction and is designed to make us look at our own candidates in an election year who claim there is a crisis and they are the only ones who can fix it.The movie is entertaining as the quirky and unorthodox Jane Bodine (Sandra Bullock) is hired by a Bolivian senator in a presidential bid. Castillo (Joaquim de Almeida) is "not trustworthy, not likable, stuck up little a-hole." He also has a smirk and connections to the IMF. Bodine takes on the job because her opponent is managed by Pat Candy (Billy Bob Thornton) a master strategist who has beaten Bodine on several occasions.Castiilo's lack of charm is changed into being a forceful individual who can get the job done in what is now a "time of crisis." Bodine has a history with Candy as the campaign becomes personal. This is an interesting behind the scenes view of campaigns filled with humor and universal political themes.Good job Bullock.Guide: F-bomb. No sex or nudity. Sex talk.

The story may feel a bit like cliché and some may even argue that this could be one of those "Drama of the week" TV movie. It certainly has a feel to it that would make for a great argument to this point. But it does have the acting talent at hand and it does have the urgency to tell a story that is very relatable. Especially to the frustrated voters in general all over the world.Will it help them get over the frustration? Apart from the fact that I don't want to spoil the movie for you, I'll just say that this is up for debate. As is the ending, which will have quite a few shake their head in disbelief. But it does make sense if you really think about it. It's not about what is being said, but what lies in between (pun intended).

MILD SPOILERSI had to see "Our Brand Is Crisis" because I've managed political campaigns before. It was as good and as bad as I thought it would be. Good, because it does indeed show how political campaigns are run, for the most part, but bad because it has a stupid, but predictable, ending, and a Left-leaning bias throughout - which I guessed correctly was coming, and simply chose to discount in my judgment of the film.Sandra Bullock starts off the film having abandoned the profession of political consulting because of a bad event we learn about later. Personal scumbag Billy Bob Thornton - who plays one in the film, too – is her capable adversary. Both are running presidential campaigns in Bolivia.Here's what rings true: the professional rivalries between consultants (who, nonetheless can be civil to one another) the scenes of actual campaigning, the strategies, families being divided by politics, the stress of campaigns, the fun people have during them anyway, the candidate who doesn't listen to his consultants, the backroom intrigue, and the dirty tricks.What's silly is the whining about money in politics (in the intro only, don't worry) and the fact that someone who's been in the business doesn't seem to know that people are mean or that politicians do, in fact, lie.Some of Bullock's lines are hilarious. How she pulls one over on the Thornton character before a big debate is brilliant. How she pulls back and listens in the beginning (though admittedly, she was ill) is exactly how one SHOULD start off a campaign before crafting and announcing a strategy. And the need to sometimes change strategies in mid-campaign is also well illustrated here.The scene where the two candidate's buses happen to be on the same road, leading to a hilarious "backside" joke, is just the kind of stunt campaigns pull on each other, and there are several "dirty tricks" shown as well that are MORE than plausible.Bullock's character, "Calamity Jane," shouldn't be as surprised and alienated by the process as is depicted here, given her long history in the profession. But in films about political consulting – like the excellent 1986 Richard Gere/Denzel Washington film "Power" which this resembles in many ways, which I highly recommend – sermonizing about how bad things can get and what's wrong with politics and managing campaigns is typical, and expected. But still, they manage to get a lot right, and it's nicely entertaining even if you aren't a political consultant, so I recommend it.

Our Brand is Crisis is based on the 2005 documentary of the same name, which followed the participation of James Carville's consulting firm in the 2002 Bolivian campaign for president. Here, Sandra Bullock plays Jane Bodine, a fictionalized version of Carville, called out of semi-retirement, following a declining career as a campaign manager. Like Carville, she accepts the challenge to manage the presidential campaign of Pedro Castillo, a former president who leans to the right on the political spectrum. Bodine's nemesis, Pat Candy (portrayed as deeply cynical in Billy Bob Thornton's performance) represents the populist candidate, Rivera, who is way ahead at the beginning of the campaign in a three-way race.Sandra Bullock is a little better here in some of her previous comic roles (e.g. The Proposal, The Heat), as the initially burnt out Bodine, only engaging in her usual pratfalls (this time it's throwing up all over the place after arriving in Bolivia), at the beginning of the film, and later settling down as a determined strategist, who eventually outfoxes her aforementioned nemesis, Pat Candy.How far will Bodine go in manipulating the public's view of Castillo? This is essentially what keeps our interest as the narrative progresses to the climax—the results of the campaign for president. First Bodine notes that Castillo, with his flat demeanor, is unable to make a personal connection to the electorate. Eventually she softens him up so that he appears to be more emotionally accessible. The team concludes that Castillo must sell the idea to the Bolivian people that the country is in a "crisis," and Castillo is just the man to fix the dire problems facing the country.Bodine urges Castillo to adopt smear tactics against his opponent but the high-minded candidate refuses. It's only after Rivera smears Castillo regarding a long-ago extra-marital affair that Castillo relents and allows Bodine to adopt similar tactics. One of those strategies involves publicizing a photo of Rivera, with a Nazi war criminal, standing in the background.Perhaps the most dramatic moment in the film occurs when rocks are thrown at Castillo's campaign bus, forcing it to stop in a small town, where angry indigenous people are protesting the possibility that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) may be allowed into the country. Castillo gets out of the bus and confronts the protesters—promising that the IMF will not be accepted without a referendum. There is also a sub-plot involving Eduardo, a campaign volunteer, who feels connected to Castillo, since a photo was taken of him and the former president on the earlier campaign trail, when he was a child. Eduardo's family members don't share his enthusiasm for Castillo and castigate him for his allegiance to the right-wing candidate.As the film's antagonist, Pat Candy has little screen time, and his confrontations with Bodine mainly amount to a series of conversations that are well-written but don't raise any stakes. The most dramatic of these interactions between the two campaign managers occurs when Bodine tricks Candy into having his candidate reference a quotation attributed to Goebbels, Hitler's vile propaganda minister.When Castillo finally wins the election by the slimmest of margins, he goes back on his promise to hold a referendum on the IMF, alienating even Eduardo, one of his most ardent supporters. And Bodine, after informing Eduardo that she wasn't responsible for Castillo's deception regarding his campaign promise, later joins him in an unlikely show of solidarity with the people she worked against during the campaign.Our Brand is Crisis is thoroughly watchable despite a dearth of big dramatic moments and a significant antagonist that propels the action forward. It has been said that the film lost money because it was inaccurately billed as a comedy. Maybe so, but this dramedy is worth at least one look.