Whiskey Tango Foxtrot
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Starring: Tina Fey, Margot Robbie, Martin Freeman, Alfred Molina, Christopher Abbott, Billy Bob Thornton
Directed by: Glenn Ficarra and John Requa
Running time: 111 minutes
What the …? Tina Fey has been cast as a war correspondent? Yes, really.
Whiskey Tango Foxtrot — which, when translated from the military phonetic alphabet, means “what the f—” — is based on journalist Kim Barker’s bestselling memoir The Taliban Shuffle: Strange Days in Afghanistan and Pakistan. But, clearly, liberties have been taken.
For starters, the action doesn’t take place in Pakistan at all, but mostly in the apparent Afghan party town known as the “Kabubble,” wherein foreign news correspondents supposedly ran more of a risk of damaging their livers by over-imbibing than damaging other body parts by encountering landmines and missiles.
Fey gets serious. Sort of. And therein lies the film’s biggest conundrum: it’s not sure if it wants to be a comedy, a drama or a romance, and veers from genre to genre.
As Kim Baker (why the subtle name change?), Fey plays a more debauched but no less cynical version of Liz Lemon, her wisecracking 30 Rock alter ego.
Baker is a disaffected TV news writer in New York looking for some life-altering change. She is in a dead-end relationship with her boyfriend. She wants to “shake it all up.”
So when the call comes from her cable station that the brass is looking for an unmarried, childless soul to head to Afghanistan for the opportunity to be on camera, Baker signs on. She knows next to nothing about the country and its people, and undergoes immediate culture shock.
Baker soon learns that there is little appetite back home for news out of Afghanistan — the film is set about a decade back — and Iraq is the new flavour du jour. So if a reporter wants serious face time on the tube, they had better come up with something explosive.
To that end, she is embedded with a marine unit led by a crusty general (Billy Bob Thornton), who, when not speaking in cryptic riddles, instructs her on the finer points of staying alive in the field.
But it’s staying alive at her journalist base that could prove more problematic, all the more so since Baker is one of the few female correspondents. Showing her the ropes is Tanya (Margot Robbie), an Aussie bombshell who has no trouble getting face time on the tube, regardless of the story. In an effort to cheer Baker up, Tanya informs her that while she may be “a six or seven in New York,” here she is a nine. The quick-thinking Baker does the math and deduces that Tanya is a 15.
Also entering the fray is charmingly degenerate Scottish photographer Iain (Martin Freeman), who, despite his lame come-on, manages to woo Baker.
While rarely dull, Whiskey Tango Foxtrot is forever changing direction. It’s hard to figure what directors Glenn Ficarra and John Requa were seeking here: Zero Dark Thirty? M*A*S*H? Casablanca? We get a soupçon of all of the above — well, maybe more Top Gun than Casablanca. Fey can do plenty, but, sorry, not Ingrid Bergman.
Nonetheless, Fey is fine, as usual. So are Robbie, Freeman and Billy Bob.
But what the … were the directors thinking in having Alfred Molina cast as the clownish and lascivious Afghan attorney general and minister of vice and virtue? And while Christopher Abbott’s role as Baker’s earnest translator is probably the most sympathetic character in the film, again, couldn’t they have found an actual Afghan to play the part?
Stay tuned for a new hashtag: #AfghanistanSoWhite.
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The title may suggest some sort of festive frivolity, but Patrick’s Day — being screened Friday at 7:15 p.m. as part of the Ciné Gael Irish film series — is anything but.
This is the heart-wrenching tale of Patrick, a schizophrenic young man (Moe Dunford) whose first sexual experience with Karen (Catherine Walker), a flight attendant, has disturbing consequences. Although she is genuine in her affections for him, she is suicidal.
Regardless of Karen’s mental state, Patrick’s overprotective mom, Maura (Kerry Fox), wants to keep her son away from any sort of relationship. She engages a rather dysfunctional cop (Philip Jackson) to keep the couple apart.
Much conniving and bullying ensues, but writer/director Terry McMahon avoids the usual stereotypes in dealing with mental illness and brings a certain dignity to sufferers who aren’t generally afforded such treatment on screen. Credit must also go to Dunford, Walker and Fox for not holding back on any level.
AT A GLANCE
Patrick’s Day screens Friday, March 4 at 7:15 p.m. at Concordia’s J.A. de Sève Cinema, 1400 de Maisonneuve Blvd. W. Tickets cost $11. For more information, visit cinegaelmontreal.com or call 514-481-3503.
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Canadian-Pakistani director Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy’s A Girl in the River, last weekend’s Oscar winner for documentary short, debuts on HBO Canada Monday at 9 p.m. The broadcast is an early commemoration of International Women’s Day, which is recognized on Tuesday.
This is the harrowing story of the attempted honour killing — by her own family — of a young woman who chose love over an arranged marriage.
Last Sunday’s trip to the Oscar podium was the second for Obaid-Chinoy, who also won for the 2012 short doc Saving Face.
