Tina Bae Fey has recently confirmed that the rumours, which have been doing the rounds for two years now, are indeed true. “I have always been the kind of person who feels like they can go into any situation and fit in”.
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At her home base, she forms a family unit with fellow reporter Tanya Vanderpoel (Margot Robbie), a Scottish photographer (Martin Freeman, dropping the nerd guise and playing a convincing cad) and her aide, Fahim Ahmadzai (“James White’s” Christopher Abbott in yet another promising performance).
A good question to now ask is what is WTF even about: Fey plays Kim Baker – based off real-life journalist Kim Barker whose memoir, The Taliban Shuffle, inspired the making of the film – the typical middle-aged-no-husband-no-kid-workaholic-woman-with-a-crappy-desk-job story.
So that’s a conflict that I know exists, and in a more traditional version of this movie it would have been the conflict that defines Baker’s identity and her journey. They also reunite with their Bad Santa star Billy Bob Thornton, who is well cast as the Marines’ commanding general; it’s one of his better roles in some time. That could change with Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, a war comedy that that is the flawless vehicle for the actress, while also giving her the opportunity to show off her talent for drama. And a lot of them don’t get the partying perks that Kim and her friends enjoy. “I’m told it was a very unconventional upbringing”, she says. Behind enemy lines, she finds-after some initial obligatory bumbling around-that she is actually really fucking good at filming explosions and getting good quotes.
Kim Barker is having a surreal experience this month: She’s watching Tina Fey play her in a movie.
I don’t expect the “Deadpool” audience to get this, but: Movies used to be about something besides fantasy and other movies.
Whiskey Tango Foxtrot is a thoroughly entertaining movie that is well worth seeing, especially for fans of Tina Fey’s work. “I don’t know why I didn’t just try to do Mean Girls 2”, she said. She is now an investigative reporter writing about social issues with the Times. “It’s a very human story about people who get addicted to this adrenaline lifestyle”. Tina has dedicated the movie to her father Don Fey who was a veteran from North Korea and she said that he would have enjoyed the movie.
Barker studied journalism at Northwestern and was working for the Chicago Tribune when she was sent to Kabul in 2002.
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Baker angers a few of the military people at first, but they quickly warm up to her. They also like her spunk, as in one of her first moments of gunfire, she jumps out of the vehicle to film.
