Our Brand Is Crisis

OUR BRAND IS CRISIS

Director : David Gordon Green

Year : 2016

Genre : Drama

Rating : ***

Academy Award winners Sandra Bullock and Billy Bob Thornton lend considerable theatrical heft to 'Our Brand Is Crisis', David Gordon Green's entertaining yet rather limp motion picture adaptation of Rachel Boynton's 2005 documentary of the same. In this fictionalised account of the events depicted in Boynton's IDA winning film, Bullock is on fiery form as the determined yet damaged 'Calamity' Jane Bodine, a retired political strategist who is hired by a failing Bolivian senator to help boost his dismal presidential campaign. Things don't get much better for the already frustrated Bodine when it is revealed that her conniving arch-nemesis (a wonderfully sleazy Billy Bob Thornton) is working in the same capacity for the opposing candidate in the campaign and is doing everything in his power to derail her efforts.

The substantial cast which also includes 'Monsters's Scoot McNairy, Anthony Mackie and Ann Dowd all do fine work here - with the always watchable Bullock delivering a brilliantly brittle performance that constantly elevates the narrative above its simplistic constraints. However, while David Gordon Green's intimate directorial style substantially intensifies the films sinister political undercurrent, Peter Straughan's patchy screenplay, while sporadically amusing, lacks the essential biting edge needed to have any lasting effect.