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Movies & TV Movies & TV Reviews

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot

WHISKEY TANGO FOXTROT (Glenn Ficarra, John Requa). 111 minutes. Opens Friday (March 4). See listing. Rating: NN


There’s a complex and compelling movie buried somewhere in Whiskey Tango Foxtrot. The film is a fictionalized take on Kim Barker’s The Taliban Shuffle. The memoir by the former South Asia bureau chief for the Chicago Tribune chronicled her experiences reporting from Afghanistan and Pakistan and how she manoeuvred around the region’s gender politics and eventually got addicted to the wartime adrenaline rush.

This could have been The Hurt Locker for journalists, and at times, it tries to be. But it also wants to be Liz Lemon Does Kabul. 

Casting Tina Fey in the lead isn’t a stretch since Barker’s memoir has been praised for wielding the 30 Rock star’s brand of self-deprecating humour, but Christopher Abbott and Alfred Molina as Afghan characters is a whole other matter.

Fey is predictably good in her most serious role to date. Her Kim Baker (not Barker) is a fish out of water in Afghanistan, a heavy-drinking reporter who gives in to the cynicism that lingers in the air along with fecal matter. 

She’s partying hard and contemplating who to bed one moment, the next doing TV spots from the site of a bombing, squirming about the bloodied limbs in the frame. The half-jokey, half-serious dynamic that works so well in The Big Short – where laughs get caught in your throat – fails to find its groove here. 

In The Big Short, director Adam McKay carefully explains the financial crisis and who it victimized. The team behind Whiskey Tango Foxtrot shortchanges investigative reporting and the story of the conflict in Afghanistan it’s supposed to be about.  

Scenes where Kim is out doing her job are feeble and too neatly packaged to be believed. Refusing to dive into the grunt work of being a reporter, directors Glenn Ficarra and John Requa tidily skim over the messy details Kim digs up. 

The tacked-on Hollywood ending – Kim aids a military rescue mission – is especially icky. This is the story of a woman whose job was finding the truth, but the movie’s conclusion is pure fiction.

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