Whiskey Tango Foxtrot
Directed by: Glenn Ficarra and John Requa
Written by: Robert Carlock - Based on the book The Taliban Shuffle: Strange Days in Afghanistan and Pakistan by Kim Barker
Starring: Tina Fey, Margot Robbie, Martin Freeman, Alfred Molina, Christopher Abbott, Billy Bob Thornton, Nicholas Braun, Stephen Peacocke, Sheila Vand, Evan Jonigkeit, Josh Charles, Fahim Anwar
Comedy/War - 112 min Reviewed by Charlie Juhl on 3 Mar 2016
Written by: Robert Carlock - Based on the book The Taliban Shuffle: Strange Days in Afghanistan and Pakistan by Kim Barker
Starring: Tina Fey, Margot Robbie, Martin Freeman, Alfred Molina, Christopher Abbott, Billy Bob Thornton, Nicholas Braun, Stephen Peacocke, Sheila Vand, Evan Jonigkeit, Josh Charles, Fahim Anwar
Comedy/War - 112 min Reviewed by Charlie Juhl on 3 Mar 2016
I spent 10 very long months in Afghanistan. I wasn’t in Kabul and I certainly wasn’t hanging with the drunken foreign expat journalists searching for a big scoop by day and reliving fraternity escapades by night. However, Whiskey Tango Foxtrot gets the atmosphere right. We’ve all seen stranger in a strange land stories before but there is something quite authentic the way Tina Fey’s Kim Baker transforms from fledgling novice to hurling expletives in the lingua franca. Based on a reporter’s memoir of her time in Kabul over a number of years, Whiskey Tango Foxtrot will not be everyone’s cup of tea; but it works for me on just about every level.
We get a hint of things to come as directors Glenn Ficarra and John Requa tease us with a hard opening. A large explosion interrupts the journalists’ dance party and everybody drunkenly rushes to the sound for breaking news exclusives. Kim Baker (Tina Fey, Sisters) looks to be an old pro during the ordeal; she multi-tasks screaming over the phone at TV producers back home and lays into a male bystander who just grabbed her ass. This is only a setup though. The words ‘three years earlier’ flash up on the screen and we meet the former Kim Baker, hiding in her cubicle writing news script about household products that can kill you and burning miles on her stationary bike.
We get a hint of things to come as directors Glenn Ficarra and John Requa tease us with a hard opening. A large explosion interrupts the journalists’ dance party and everybody drunkenly rushes to the sound for breaking news exclusives. Kim Baker (Tina Fey, Sisters) looks to be an old pro during the ordeal; she multi-tasks screaming over the phone at TV producers back home and lays into a male bystander who just grabbed her ass. This is only a setup though. The words ‘three years earlier’ flash up on the screen and we meet the former Kim Baker, hiding in her cubicle writing news script about household products that can kill you and burning miles on her stationary bike.
Not sure why, but jumping at the chance to sprint off to Afghanistan, it appears Kim wants to shake up her life. Even though it is only 2003, the conflict in Afghanistan has already been forgotten by the news media, folks back home, and the world as the second Iraq war was about to kick off. Screenplay adaptor Robert Carlock, also a Saturday Night Live alum, goes a bit overboard to show us how unprepared Kim is for her adventure. She spills out a couple hundred dollars on a Kabul street when she mistakenly pulls out a wad of cash in the wind, she is not very careful in keeping her headscarf on and gets swatted by other women in the street, and she sports a neon orange backpack the Marines are none too keen to be seen with.
By this point, the film is already getting the little stuff right. The airplane coming into Kabul performs a corkscrew landing to help evade possible surface-to-air missiles, you rely wholeheartedly on your translator because learning the native Pashto takes forever, and everyone is too eager to tell you about the 4-10-4 rule. It is common lore in the military that any girl considered a 4 back home is automatically a 10 in faraway places like Iraq and Afghanistan. This message is throttled to death and after the third time someone explains it I wanted to shout, “Enough already, we get it!” One of the first few friends Kim makes is with gorgeous, blonde reporter Tanya Vanderpool (Margot Robbie, The Big Short) who not only agrees she is a 15 on the 10 point scale but immediately asks Kim if she can have sex with her New Zealand security detail.
Vanderpool comes to represent the film’s main decision point. As Kim spends more time in the war zone, she takes more risks and not only places herself in danger, but her support team. Kim’s translator, Fahim (Christopher Abbott), notices the signs of someone developing an addiction to adrenaline and always trying to one up the situation. Using a series of relationship plots and professional achievements and failures, directors Ficarra and Requa bob and weave around how Kim will ultimately turn out. Will she fall so deep into the bacchanal of the journalist’s stronghold and chase after every dangerous lead or can she possibly pull back and realize there are limits?
Abbott as Fahim is a surprise. He was outstanding in last year’s indie James White and I did not recognize Fahim was played by an American until the end. Another supporting character who impresses is Billy Bob Thornton (Entourage) as the Marine Colonel who plays irritated at Kim’s presence on his patrols. Thornton goes deadpan to emphasize Kim annoys him and that the presence of his Marines in Afghanistan displeases him. I heard a line from one of the Marines I haven’t heard since Afghanistan, “It’s all about hearts and minds; they’re the best places to shoot somebody.” Naturally, hardly any of Whiskey Tango Foxtrot was filmed in Afghanistan; everything was shot in New Mexico. They pull it off too. The New Mexican desert looks like Helmand Province and hillier areas substitute for Oruzgan and even Badakhshan. Sure, there was some second unit footage from the actual Kabul, but here is a big thumbs up to the production designer and set designer for a convincing atmosphere.
Tina Fey as Kim Baker is not as out there as her Liz Lemon from 30 Rock, but they’re in the same ballpark. She knocks easy one-liners like, “It’s so pretty I don’t even want to vote” out of the park as she comments on her burka she hides in on a particularly risky mission to Kandahar. Whiskey Tango Foxtrot also continues a newer tradition of setting a tense, climactic action scene to a soft rock ballad just as Deadpool pulled off recently. The Marines storm a house to rescue a kidnapped journalist all to the tune of Harry Nilsson’s “Without You”. I will go ahead and point out I may be more biased than usual on this review. I was the only person in the audience truly impressed with the film and I believe it’s because how much I identify with it. Living in Afghanistan sucks, but there are times of levity and even a bit of enlightenment every now and again and Whiskey Tango Foxtrot exhibits exactly that.
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