Our Brand Is Crisis Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		2.5
Video		4.5
Audio		4.5
Extras		1.0
Overall		3.0

Our Brand Is Crisis Blu-ray Movie Review

Seize the News Cycle

Reviewed by Michael Reuben February 1, 2016

Did Our Brand Is Crisis suffer from bad timing? Was it released to theaters too early in the current election cycle? The fictionalized re-telling of Rachel Boynton's 2005 documentary about U.S. political consultants hired by a candidate for the presidency of Bolivia might play differently now than when it bombed in October 2015. The twists, turns and reversals that have dominated our own electoral process in the succeeding months have so riveted the nation that the film's exploration of how the process is manipulated feels more relevant than ever. Maybe now there's more of an audience for this backstage look at how candidates and their teams scheme, connive and battle each other like opposing sports teams. (The chief schemer in Boynton's documentary was noted gun-for-hire James Carville, whose familiar death's head grin survives in the new film through the skeletal features of Billy Bob Thornton, playing a Carville-like campaign manager.)

Then again, maybe Our Brand Is Crisis arrived on the scene too late. When producers Grant Heslov and George Clooney first commissioned the screenplay as a possible project for Clooney, George W. Bush still occupied the White House. The melodrama of subsequent election cycles has dwarfed anything documented by Boynton or imagined by screenwriter Peter Straughan (Frank and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy). After endless hours of professional spin-meisters blanketing the media with self-serving takes on every poll and rally, maybe truth has outstripped fiction. Instead of feeling timely, the David Gordon Green-directed feature may just be old news.

Or maybe the timing was irrelevant. Maybe the real problem with Our Brand Is Crisis is that it's a story divided against itself. Part of it wants to be an exposé and a satire of political manipulation. Another part wants to be a story of one individual's redemption, and while "redemption" can be as effective a brand as crisis, no one is likely to care about a political hitman's effort to reclaim his soul by turning "honest" (whatever that may mean in the world of politics). Even when the hitman is transformed into a hitwoman played by lovable Sandra Bullock, for whom Straughan and the producers retooled their script, it's hard to inspire sympathy for a character who wakes up one day to realize that selling candidates like soap has destroyed her soul. What else did she expect?

Bullock plays Jane Bodine, nicknamed "Calamity Jane" both for her take-no-prisoners style and for several spectacular failures on her political consultant's résumé. Having retired from the field to cultivate a life of calmness and order, Jane is lured back into the fray by a former colleague, Nell (Ann Dowd, Compliance), who needs Jane's ruthless gifts to salvage her latest project: the presidential campaign of a wealthy Bolivian businessman, Pedro Castillo (Joaquim de Almeida). Castillo is a hardliner whose former tenure as president was marked by violent repression, and he is now being whipped in the polls by every other candidate in the field, but especially by a populist reformer named Rivera (Louis Arcella). Though Jane initially declines the job, she reconsiders upon learning that Rivera has hired her former nemesis, Pat Candy (Thornton). After repeatedly losing campaigns to Candy, Jane cannot resist another chance to beat him, even if it means re-igniting the many psychological and substance-abuse problems that prompted her to retire.

The best parts of Our Brand Is Crisis involve Jane's daily battles, whether with Candy (who virtually licks his chops when Jane appears on the scene); with her own colleagues, whose efforts to re-brand Castillo as "likable" would seem like a parody, if they weren't so alarmingly familiar; and with the candidate himself, who is enough of an egotist to resent being "handled". Once Jane recovers from altitude sickness, she runs roughshod over her younger colleagues (played by Anthony Mackie and Scoot McNairy), who are trying to "soften" Castillo's history as an oligarch and authoritarian by photographing him with kids and llamas. It's Jane who has the insight to transform the candidate's weaknesses into strengths by recasting Castillo as the sole candidate who can rescue Bolivia from its current "crisis"—a word that she has her man use in almost every sentence. At the same time, Jane brings in LeBlanc (Zoe Kazan), her own specialist in digging up dirt to be thrown at the opposition; the young researcher also has the advantage of speaking Spanish, unlike the rest of the American political team.

In the ensuing battle of soundbites and appearances, everything becomes fair game. One of the film's running jokes is Jane's fondness for quotations from Sun Tzu, Machiavelli, Warren Beatty and other masters of manipulation. Some of the best scenes are the periodic exchange of taunts and gloats between Jane and Candy, who, in a dramatic convenience, are staying in hotel rooms directly across from each other. If Our Brand Is Crisis had stuck to these elements, it might have been a trenchant satire on how modern political campaigns are waged and won.

Unfortunately, the Hollywood compulsion to have protagonists evolve into someone "better" requires that Jane be saddled with a crisis of conscience. You can see the path to her conversion laid out like coloring book instructions as soon as the film introduces a young Bolivian idealist named Eduardo (Reynaldo Pacheco), who is poor and orphaned but supports Castillo because the candidate once offered him encouragement at a rally. Eduardo's youthful enthusiasm guarantees his eventual disappointment, for which Jane ends up taking responsibility. As you watch Jane's developing fondness for Eduardo, you hope that Our Brand Is Crisis won't shrink from an honest portrayal, because a real political consultant would tell Eduardo to grow up and get over his naïveté. Unfortunately, the film delivers on its cliches, leading Jane to a conclusion that is supposed to be positive and uplifting, except that every note of it feels false. The Calamity Janes of this world sometimes rise and sometimes crash and burn, but they don't hear the voice of God on the road to Damascus, encouraging them to re-emerge as Joan of Arc.

Our Brand Is Crisis Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Our Brand Is Crisis was shot by Tim Orr, who has been David Gordon Green's regular cinematographer throughout his varied career, including Pineapple Express, George Washington and Prince Avalanche. Orr shot on film, with post-production completed on a digital intermediate by Warner's MPI. Thanks to the quality of modern film stocks and lenses, Warner's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray features an image so clean, detailed and finely resolved that it could almost pass for digital photography. Big crowd scenes of rallies, debates and street demonstrations show individual faces and figures. The ornate furnishings of Castillo's residence provide a fitting contrast to the slum conditions in which impoverished citizens like Eduardo must live. Colors are warm and deeply saturated, helping to "sell" the Louisiana and Puerto Rico locations for Bolivia.

Warner Home Video continues to waste opportunities by placing films like Our Brand Is Crisis on a BD-50, then leaving almost half the disc empty. Unlike the Warner Archive Collection, which uses the maximum possible bitrate, WHV has mastered this densely visual film with an anemic rate of 23.99 Mbps. Careful allocation by the compressionist has avoided any obvious errors (at least on my Oppo BDP-103 player), but there's no excuse for squandering digital real estate in this fashion. (I shudder to think what they'll do with the upcoming UHD format.)

Our Brand Is Crisis Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Our Brand Is Crisis has a surprisingly lively and immersive 5.1 sound mix, encoded on Blu-ray in lossless DTS-HD MA. There's a pervasive sense of the surroundings that constantly changes as the action shifts among conference rooms, auditoriums, the streets of La Paz and various locales around the country where the Castillo campaign bus makes stops. An occasional sequence like the one where demonstrators pelt the bus with rocks provides a sonic jolt; at other times, the richly dramatic score by Dave Wingo (Mud, Take Shelter) supplies the foreboding sense of portentous events that is the sonic equivalent of the Castillo campaign's "crisis" theme. Dynamic range is broad, bass extension is impressively deep for a non-action film, and clarity and fidelity are outstanding. The essential dialogue comes through clearly, even when people are talking over each other, as often happens.

Our Brand Is Crisis Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Sandra Bullock: A Role Like No Other (1080p; 1.78:1; 11:00): As EPKs go, this one is unusual, because it focuses so intently on the star and her character. If there were ever any doubts that the emphasis on Jane Bodine's "redemption" was intentional, this featurette puts them to rest with topic headings like "Understanding Jane's Arc" and "Jane at the End of the Movie". The interviewees include Bullock, Thornton, McNairy, Mackie, Kazan, director Green and producer Heslov.



• Bonus Trailers: At startup the disc plays trailers for Black Mass and The 33, which can be skipped with the chapter forward button and are not otherwise available once the disc loads.

Our Brand Is Crisis Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

I happened to watch Our Brand Is Crisis shortly after attending a panel discussion moderated by a well-known TV and film personality who, at one point, bemoaned the movie industry's star-driven approach to casting. Describing a studio pitch meeting for a film about the life of Thomas Jefferson—whether real or imagined was unclear—the moderator reported how an executive asked who would play Sally Hemmings, the slave by whom Jefferson had six children. "That's obvious!" came the answer. "It'll be Sandra Bullock."

Bullock's casting as Calamity Jane Bodine isn't nearly that kind of stretch, despite efforts by the film's producers (including Bullock) to make the protagonist's gender seem like a radical innovation. Indeed, Kathy Bates played a similarly ruthless political consultant in Primary Colors, and that character's "arc" was far more credible than Calamity Jane's. Bullock gives a fine performance, bringing the character to life in memorable detail, but the story becomes too much about Jane and too little about the questionable business in which she has become so skilled. Barry Levinson's Wag the Dog was a better political satire; it's the kind of film Our Brand Is Crisis could have been. A superior Blu-ray technically, but I wouldn't rush to add it to your library.