Whiskey Foxtrot Tango plays like Animal House with warlords, or maybe Fear and Loathing in Afghanistan, but Barker describes the reality of her time there in more poetic terms.
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Fey has been busy on the press circuit, as her latest film, “Whiskey Tango Foxtrot”, based loosely on journalist Kim Barker’s experience as a war reporter in Afghanistan, opens this week in the U.S.
She befriends another reporter named Tanya (Margot Robbie) who is both a competitor and a buddy – and who talks endlessly about sex, a main topic in Kabul – and she hangs out with a photographer named Iain (Martin Freeman) who eventually becomes a love interest.
In the end, people get hurt in multiple senses of the term, as they tend to do, but as one young but war-weathered marine puts it: “You embrace the suck; you move the f*ck forward”. “Truthfully, I was a fan of Martin’s forever from the British “Office” and ‘Fargo, ‘ and so it’s one thing when you’re producing a movie, I’m like, ‘I want that guy, ‘” she said. Tina brings her impeccable comic timing and sarcasm to the nonstop insanity that is the “Kabubble”, sure, but she also performs with honest emotion in such a way that I felt it was her most worthwhile dramatic role in a movie. In October 2015, Benjamin told Playbill that they are still writing the second act. Tina Fey does some of her very best work here and there are some good amusing bits, but the drama side of the equation doesn’t ignite.
Cover MediaWhiskey Tango Foxtrot has Fey playing a TV producer who in the middle of a mid-life crisis decides to jump start her career by taking on an opening as embedded journalist in Afghanistan. “The relationship between Kim and Fahim is so attractive”, she said.
“It’s hard to even think about”, she says, “people seeing this in a theatre”. You’re probably not going to like parts of it because it makes you seem more heroic than you think of yourself.’ She was absolutely right.
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“That’s the whole reason I wrote this book”, she said. I was mad. And no one was paying attention to Afghanistan and Pakistan…. “Because that’s what I do for a living, is get in trouble on the internet”. “It’s shamefully true that I heard about the review of the book and thought I could worm my way into the project”. She did it well in the enjoyable This is Where I Leave You.
