"Our Brand Is Crisis" straddles the line between satire and serious political drama, but its humor lacks the bite of similarly minded features like 1997's "Wag the Dog" and 1999's "Election." What it does have on its side are a pair of sharp performances from Sandra Bullock (2013's "Gravity") and Billy Bob Thornton (2015's "Entourage"), their barbed onscreen maneuvering carrying the picture through some meandering rough patches and a script by Peter Straughan (2011's "The Debt") that severely underutilizes its supporting cast.
An illustrious strategist whose nickname of "Calamity Jane" proceeds her, Jane Bodine (Sandra Bullock) is lured out of her self-imposed retirement to turn around the sagging poll numbers of erratic Bolivian presidential candidate Pedro Castillo (Joaquim de Almeida). Once she lands in the South American country and her extreme altitude sickness subsides, she gets to work on altering the angle of Castillo's campaign, playing upon the civil and socioeconomic fears of the voters—the crisis of the title—while positioning the senator as a tough, passionate leader who gets things done. Jane scarcely believes a word of what she's hawking, but that is the name of the game in her line of work. Adding fire in her belly is the hot-shot, dirty-dealing Pat Candy (Billy Bob Thornton), the adversarial political consultant working for leading opponent/candidate Victor Rivera (Louis Arcella). As Jane tells it, she and Candy have been on opposite sides for three or four elections, and he has come out on top three or four times.
See Dustin Putman, TheFilmFile.com. for full review
