Our Brand Is Crisis

According to Our Brand Is Crisis, politics is a game, and politicians are the players who aren’t afraid to lie and cheat in order to win.

If you don’t know that, you haven’t been paying attention, but you might gain some insight from this mildly subversive comedy whose broad target is skewering shady campaign tactics and questionable integrity among candidates and their behind-the-scenes handlers.

The film is inspired by a 2005 documentary of the same name that chronicled the real-life efforts of an American advisory firm spearheaded by James Carville to launch a successful campaign for a Bolivian presidential candidate.

Although the topic is still relevant, it’s treated with a lighter touch and a broader approach by versatile director David Gordon Green (Pineapple Express) and screenwriter Peter Straughan (The Men Who Stare at Goats).

In this version, Carville’s character has been transformed into Jane (Sandra Bullock), a veteran cutthroat political strategist with plenty of personal demons who’s coaxed out of self-imposed exile by an American lobbyist (Anthony Mackie) to assist a fledgling presidential campaign in Bolivia.

After seeing that Castillo (Joaquim de Almeida) is trailing badly in the polls with just three months before the election, Jane is forced to confront a bad case of altitude sickness as well as her own indifference.

She perks up after learning that her smarmy longtime rival (Billy Bob Thornton) is overseeing the campaign for the frontrunner. So the race becomes personal, and Jane abandons her moral compass to try and win at all costs.

The film smartly avoids bogging down in Bolivian politics, since its point is that the issues are irrelevant and elections aren’t won or lost by policies and stances. Rather, the keys to swaying public perception range from charisma and rhetoric to party affiliation and timely muckraking. Such qualities transcend geographic boundaries, which even the least cynical political aficionados can admit.

Although Bullock brings an offbeat charm to her performance, the story is predictable with its polling numbers and countdown to election day, and its petty gamesmanship along the way between the American spin doctors.

More than anything, however, it’s missing the type of satirical edge that could have given the film more immediacy and resonance, especially during an election cycle.

Rated R, 107 minutes.