Butler's Cinema Scene

Sandra Bullock and Joaquim de Alameida

“OUR BRAND IS CRISIS”  My rating: C+ (Opens wide on Oct. 30)

107 minutes | MPAA rating: R

“Truth is relative in politics,” observes campaign consultant “Calamity” Jane Bodine (Sandra Bullock) in the opening moments of “Our Brand Is Crisis.”

“I could convince myself of anything if the price is right.”

A catalog of the many dispiriting ways in which the electoral process has become an exercise in lying and slime-slinging, “Our Brand…” is grimly satiric and thoroughly depressing.

Dramatically it is undercooked, with outrage outscoring humanity.

The latest from chameleonic director David Gordon Green is a fictional remake of a decade-old documentary of the same name. That film followed a group of American campaign strategists — among them Clinton stalwart James Carville — working their black magic for candidates in a Bolivian presidential election.

The doc showed these Yankee fixers bringing their mercenary campaign marketing tactics to the developing world.

Gee, thanks, fellas.

Bullock’s Jane Bodine is a one-time terror of the campaign trail who, in the wake of a humiliating defeat, has spent the last six years in eccentric isolation in a Colorado cabin.

Now she’s offered a chance to get back into the game by working for a Bolivian presidential candidate. Jane is ready to reject the idea until she learns that her old nemesis Pat Candy (Billy Bob Thornton with Carville-esque chrome dome) is working for the competition. This will be her chance for revenge.

Jane and her team (Anthony Mackie, Ann Dowd, Scoot McNairy, Zoe Kazan) are working for Pedro Gallo (Joaquim de Almeida), a surly plutocrat and past president whose first term was marked by the crony-pleasing sale of Bolivia’s national resources to multinational corporations.

Now the Americans must figure out how to propel this unsavory character to the top of a six-candidate race.  Their plan is to emphasize crises for which their man offers the best solutions. That these “crises” don’t actually exist is beside the point . They will strike fear in the hearts of Bolivia’s various economic and ethnic voting blocs.

Dirty tricks, sleazy smears and outright lying are all part of the game. It doesn’t matter how you win as long as you do win. The setting may be South America, but the action looks all too familiar.

Peter Straughan’s screenplay tries to put a human face on all this skullduggery. He gives us a campaign aide (Reynaldo Pacheco) who ignores the economic interests of his slum existence to become a Castillo worker — as a child he was featured in a baby-kissing photo with Castillo and now thinks he has a special relationship with the candidate.

Almeida (a Portuguese actor who played the drug lord in “Fast Five”) is alternately chilling and slyly funny as the presidential hopeful, a man who can turn on the charm just long enough to disguise his contempt for the lower classes.

At the film’s center, Bullock knows how to hold the screen, and she presents Jane — a role originally written for a man — as a borderline emotional wreck who only finds strength in cutthroat politicking. It’s fun to watch her evolve from headache-racked, air-gasping wraith (Bolivia’s high altitude takes some getting used to) to gleefully combative commander.

Director Green, whose resume runs from mainstream raunch (“Pineapple Express,” “Your Highness”) to art house angst (“Prince Avalanche,” “Joe”), doesn’t quite know what to do with this material. The film hovers uneasily between comedy and drama without committing to either.

Only the most politically ill-informed viewer will be surprised by the content of “Our Brand Is Crisis.” Then again, being politically ill-informed seems to be the status quo. For all its faults, the film has a message worth hammering home.

| Robert W. Butler