Our Brand is Crisis hits at the perfect moment as the US goes into a presidential election season. Although dealing with politics in Bolivia, the film has many ties with how elections and presidential races are run here in the states. Of course, the obvious message throughout the entire film is the orchestrators behind political campaigns are master manipulators, with complete knowledge on how to coerce a population to throw support behind a specific candidate.
Our Brand is Crisis follows “Calamity” Jane Bodine (Sandra Bullock) as she leads a group of political tacticians to win the reelection of the Bolivian president. Winning is no easy task, however, as the Bolivian president is losing in the polls. Not only that, but his political rival is “Calamity Jane’s” nemesis Pat Candy (Billy Bob Thornton) running his campaign. It’s up to Jane and the rest of the tacticians to put the president back into office; but the real question is if they should.
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Menu:
The menu for Our Brand is Crisis is about as barebones as you can get with a menu. It provides a static image of the same cover you have on the front of the Blu-ray, and features only 5 options: Play, Scene Selection, Audio, Subtitles and Special Features. The main theme from the movie plays in the background while users select their options. It seems though that the music stops if users are inactive for a while.
Audio selections include English, English-descriptive, French, Spanish and Portuguese.
Special Features:
There is only one special feature included with the Blu-ray titled “Sandra Bullock: A Role Like No Other”. In this special feature, viewers are treated to a behind the scenes interview with Sandra Bullock, in which she discusses the film and the character she portrays.
Video:
This Blu-ray release of Our Brand is Crisis is displayed at a resolution of 1080p with a aspect ratio of 1.85:1. Since Bolivia is a South American country, there are vibrant colors throughout the film, all while retaining a classic “political drama” color scheme (many blues, whites) when it comes to scenes dealing with the political race. Throughout the Blu-ray I noticed that it was remarkably grainy for a film that was released in 2015. It wasn’t overly distracting, but it was very noticeable in darker scenes.
Audio:
The Blu-ray is presented in DTS-HD 5.1 surround sound, and actually sounds really great. The dialogue, music and sound effects were all crystal clear. The audio mixing was great as well, as I never once felt the need to turn up or down the volume depending on the scene.
