Butler's Cinema Scene

Tina Fey…embedded

“WHISKEY TANGO FOXTROT” My rating: B-

112 minutes | MPAA rating: R

Despite Tina Fey’s name above the title, “SNL’s” Lorne Greene as a producer, and a trailer that makes it look like a barrel of yuks, “Whiskey Tango Foxtrot” is not exactly a comedy.

Oh, there are some great laughs here. But this film from writer/directors Glenn Ficarra and John Sequa (“I Love You Phillip Morris,” “Focus,” “Crazy, Stupid, Love”) aims for bigger targets and generally hits them.

Based on journalist Kim Barker’s memoir of reporting on the Afghan war, “Whiskey Tango…” is about a more-or-less complacent American gal who gets bitten by the bug of high-intensity, risk-taking journalism.

As the film begins TV news writer Kim Baker (Fey) hasn’t a clue what she’s doing in the war zone that is Afghanistan. She’s naive about Muslim culture (particularly as it applies to mingling the sexes). She’s embedded with a unit of Marines who politely tolerate her ignorance (she discovers that a “wet hooch” is a tent with a shower), though they gradually warm up to her.

And she succumbs to the party atmosphere that explodes every booze-filled night as Western journalists — virtual prisoners in their frat house of a Kabul compound — let off steam through mass misbehavior.

Martin Freeman, Tina Fey

The film is less a conventional narrative than a series of episodes that slowly build a picture of how this American woman becomes addicted to the high of combat coverage. Lacking a strong story line, the picture relies on its characters to pick up the slack, and happily “Whiskey Tango” has a slew of them.

Margot Robie

Margot Robie plays the only other woman in this journalistic hothouse, a beauty who befriends Kim and teaches her the ropes of social survival. (Always ask before sleeping with another journalist’s bodyguard.)

Alfred Molina is a high Afghan muckamuck who desperately wants to become a “special friend” to our heroine.

Billy Bob Thornton is a tough Marine general (is there any other kind?) who is less than thrilled to have a woman journalist on board, but who softens when he realizes Kim can get intel from local Afghan women who would never approach an American male.

Martin Freeman is a Scottish reporter who becomes Kim’s love interest.

Christopher Abbott

But perhaps the film’s most memorable performance comes from Christopher Abbott as Kim’s Afghan interpreter, Fahim. Abbott is an American but he’s utterly convincing as this decent young Muslim who becomes the lady reporter’s guide in navigating the unfamiliar waters of Islamic culture. It’s a role that could have been a throwaway.  Instead Abbott makes it the film’s moral center.

Ultimately the movie’s success falls to Fey, who shows a dramatic side rarely explored in her previous films. Add to that Ficcara and Sequa’s successful balancing of the film’s comedic and serious elements, and you’ve got an effective and generally diverting look at life on the wild side.

| Robert W. Butler