#Sandra bullock spy agent election movie movie

If you’re a political junkie, this is your time of year. Is it political parody with heart, a satire that jabs with its funny bone, or a south-of-the-border rom-com based on real headlines? (The biggest audience response, for what it’s worth, comes from Bullock’s bare buttocks hanging out an open bus window.)

#Sandra bullock spy agent election movie movie

The movie has some solid DNA, but it never seems to know whether it wants to make us think, make us chuckle or make us sad. Peter Straughan, who provided the screenplay, is also the writer of the espionage thriller Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. The director, David Gordon Green, has a wide-ranging resume that includes the stoner comedies Pineapple Express and Your Highness. Zoe Kazan plays a young dirty-tricks research wonk brought in to turn up the heat when things shift into true “crisis” overdrive. Scoot McNairy, Ann Dowd and Anthony Mackie are also aboard as Calamity Jane’s team members. But the deft, unfussy way the two characters spar and parry, in guarded conversations and piercing silences, are artful reminders of just how these two pros can make the most of their screen time. There’s a murky, turbulent history between Bodine and Candy that we never fully understand, just one of several things the movie doesn’t make clear. Bullock’s character-a part originally written for a male-is an amalgam of several other actual people.īullock and Thornton provide the movie’s real spark it’s too bad there’s not more of it, and more of them, to help the whole thing catch fire. Thornton’s character is a movie remold of former hardball strategist James Carville, who appeared as himself in the original film. It’s based on things that went down at a real 2002 Bolivian election, which was chronicled in an award-winning 2005 documentary of the same name. That’s why the formerly formidable campaign strategist is lured out of early retirement to help an unpopular Bolivian president in an upcoming election-by convincing the reluctant public, through whatever means necessary, that they should vote for him.īut this battle’s not just political, it’s also personal: Bodine has to match wits with an old nemesis, Pat Candy (Billy Bob Thornton), who’s been hired to strategize for the other side. Jane is pretty good at convincing other people, too. “I can convince myself of many things, if the price is right,” says Sandra Bullock’s character, “Calamity Jane” Bodine, in Our Brand is Crisis. Starring Sandra Bullock & Billy Bob Thornton Sandra Bullock, Billy Bob Thornton make politics personal in ‘Crisis’