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Our Brand Is Crisis

  Unrated Closed Captioning

Rachel Boynton

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Plot Summary

Documentary filmmaker Rachel Boynton follows the machinations of the political consulting firm Greenberg Carville Shrum as they work on an election campaign in South America that goes terribly awry. The film's title, Our Brand Is Crisis, comes from the consultants' efforts to sell the voters of Bolivia on the idea that the country faced an imminent economic and political crisis, and needed to turn to the experienced hand of their candidate, Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada, affectionately known as "Goni." Goni had been president in the 1990s, and had overseen a type of privatization of Bolivia's economy (including a large natural gas reserve) known as "Capitalization," through which a large percentage of the national companies were sold to private interests, with some of the money going toward social security and health-care plans. With Goni lagging in the polls, GCS, whose most recognizable public face is James Carville, is shown conducting focus groups and strategy meetings. It becomes clear that Bolivians see his presidency as a failure, because they feel he sold out their interests, and failed to produce the jobs that he promised Capitalization would bring. Goni's campaign eventually "goes negative," trying to draw suspicion to the leading candidate, Manfred Reyes Villa, because of his wealth and his military background. The negative campaigning works, to a degree, but it also makes a more formidable candidate of the left-leaning Evo Morales, a former leader of the coca growers union, whose campaign also gets a shot in the arm from a smear from the U.S. ambassador. Our Brand Is Crisis, Boynton's directorial debut, was shown at New Directors/New Films, presented by the Museum of Modern Art and the Film Society of Lincoln Center, in 2005.

Rotten Tomatoes Movie Reviews

TOMATOMETER

92%
  • Reviews Counted: 39
  • Fresh: 36
  • Rotten: 3
  • Average Rating: 7.3/10

Top Critics' Reviews

Fresh: Rachel Boynton's momentous documentary chronicles the election-strategizing process in scrupulous detail. – Laura Kern, New York Times, Jul 16, 2008

Fresh: What's eye-opening, as well as depressing, is that the film reveals how even the politics of a nation's life and death can now be reduced to a technocratic shell game. – Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly, Sep 7, 2011

Fresh: Our Brand Is Crisis proves as entertaining as the earlier The War Room, which also featured Carville, but is more somber. – Ronnie Scheib, Variety, Nov 10, 2010

Fresh: Unlikely as it sounds, a documentary that details with jaw-dropping candor how contemporary political campaigning works at the highest levels of government is set not in this country but in the far-off reaches of Bolivia. – Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times, Sep 20, 2007

Read More About This Movie On Rotten Tomatoes

Customer Reviews

Yawn.

This is almost an interesting movie as it shows one of the facets of how our country attempts to manipulate the governments of other countries. The downside of the film is that it does not go beyond the campaign and into the turmoil that is Bolivia. It does not talk about how the people of Bolivia came to be so organized, or talk about the involvement of of the IMF or American Corporations in the extraction of wealth from that country. The question is never asked, "Why is the ex-president so despised?" Without that context this film really is doesn't mean anything. So an American political consulting agency works for people in other countries, so what? I guess the one thing you can garner from this film is a very sanitized vision of how political strategists think. But really we already know that don't we?

Very Good

I watched this documentary in my political analysis course and I must say it's extremely interesting. This film sheds light on how elections are won in a democracy using consulting firms. It's astonishing how the firms work and what politicians do to win elections. Very interesting to see how campaigns really work, especially given the fact that these are American consulting firms being exposed.

Bilingual - a good start (the movie is a different story)

My commyent is more about how this film is about 50/50 english and spanish. Do not try and watch this movie on an ipod. You will strain your eyes trying to read the text if you do not understand spanish.

But I like the fact that itunes is now offering films in different languages, even if it is not on purpose. At least it is a start.

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View In iTunes
  • $9.99
  • Genre: Documentary
  • Released: 2006

Customer Ratings