Whiskey Tango Foxtrot *** (2016, Tina Fey, Margot Robbie, Martin Freeman) – Movie Review

Tina Fey throws everything she knows into a big serious star role in which she plays the feisty, workaholic real-life American journalist Kim Barker in an entertaining movie that recounts her wartime coverage in Afghanistan when she’s sent by her TV cable channel to be war correspondent there.

Fey comes off very well, in a likeable, thoughtful performance, though I’d like to have seen much more of Margot Robbie’s tough cookie journalist Tanya Vanderpoel and much less of Martin Freeman’s hangdog ‘Glaswegian’ reporter Iain MacKelpie. Alfred Molina just about gets away with playing dodgy local Afghanistan minister Ali Massoud Sadiq, though Billy Bob Thornton doesn’t make quite the splash he should as the oddly reasonably kindly US Marine General Hollanek.

Robert Carlock’s lively and often witty screenplay is based on the 2011 memoir book The Taliban Shuffle: Strange Days in Afghanistan and Pakistan by Kim Barker. Though it ends up in the interesting rather than the riveting category, it is a good film for intelligent grown-ups, when that’s getting real rare form the major studios (it’s Paramount), so we need it to fare well an be thankful for it.

It comes from the talented directing team of Glenn Ficarra and John Requa (I Love You Phillip Morris, Crazy, Stupid, Love, and Focus).

© Derek Winnert 2016 Movie Review

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