Our Brand Is Crisis

Our Brand Is Crisis is a 2015 American comedy-drama film directed by David Gordon Green and written by Peter Straughan, based on the 2005 documentary film of the same name by Rachel Boynton. The film gives a fictionalized account of the involvement of American political campaign strategists Greenberg Carville Shrum (GCS) in the 2002 Bolivian presidential election. The film stars Sandra Bullock, Scoot McNairy, Billy Bob Thornton, Anthony Mackie, Ann Dowd and Joaquim de Almeida. Principal photography began on September 29, 2014, in New Orleans, Louisiana. George Clooney and Grant Heslov produced. The film was screened in the Special Presentations section of the 2015 Toronto International Film Festival. It was theatrically released by Warner Bros. on October 30, 2015. It received mixed reviews, despite Bullock's performance being largely praised, and was a box office disappointment. Plot In 2002, Bolivian politician Pedro Castillo hires an American political consulting firm (based on James Carville's Greenberg Carville Shrum firm) to help him win the 2002 Bolivian presidential election. The firm brings in "Calamity" Jane Bodine to manage Castillo's fledging campaign. The opposition's top political consultant is her nemesis, fellow American Pat Candy. In Bolivia, the situation is tense: Bodine learns that the indigenous people, who are a majority in the country but lack any real political power, are protesting for constitutional reform to get proper representation. The American consultants, not knowing the language or the culture of Bolivia, are persuaded by Bodine, a burned out veteran of American politics, to follow a strategy of smear campaigning to make up for their candidate's shortcomings. However, Castillo refuses to give permission for the team to do so. It is only after Bodine arranges for the distribution of a flyer accusing Castillo of a long-ago affair (and blaming it on the opposition) does she finally get him to agree to smear his opponents.