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Whiskey Tango Foxtrot: Mini-review

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Tina Fey

Tina Fey plays it somewhat serious in Whiskey Tango Foxtrot

C+Imagine that Liz Lemon, Tina Fey‘s character in the TV comedy series 30 Rock, had been sent to Afghanistan a decade ago to cover the war there. The results would probably look like Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, a movie that has a number of entertaining scenes but never quite coalesces as a dramatic whole.

Fey plays Kim Baker, a cable news journalist who tries to jumpstart a stalled career by taking an assignment in Afghanistan. She soon grows to love the mix of danger, sex, and partying that forms the lifestyle of foreign journalists. Eventually, she becomes more serious about a news photographer (Martin Freeman), a relationship that may end when her assignment eventually does.

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot is based on a memoir by Chicago Tribune journalist Kim Barker about her own experiences in Afghanistan. The film consists primarily of various anecdotal scenes featuring Kim with a variety of colorful characters, including an experienced Australian journalist (Margot Robbie) who shows her the ropes, a Marine general (Billy Bob Thornton) with a dim view of journalists in general, and a lecherous local politician (Alfred Molina). Many of these scenes, taken directly from the book, work quite well, especially the relationship between Kim and the general, who grudgingly comes to accept her. Whiskey Tango Foxtrot also paints a bizarre but fascinating picture of journalists partying like there’s no tomorrow in buildings that are oases of booze, rock music, and sex in the midst of a highly dangerous war zone lying just outside the exit door. Despite this often compelling imagery and a solid dramatic performance by Fey, however, Kim never feels like a real character. Instead, she’s a plot device whose character development is shown by montages of her partying in night clubs as the months go by. Whiskey Tango Foxtrot aims for emotional depth in a closing stateside encounter between Kim and a now crippled soldier she interviewed in Afghanistan, but the scene feels curiously flat. As a black comic depiction of the outlandish realities of modern warfare, Whiskey Tango Foxtrot succeeds, but as the story of an actual journalist, it ultimately misses the target. 
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Our Brand Is Crisis: Mini-review

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Sandra Bullock

Sandra Bullock doesn’t seem to be involved in any crisis here

C+Only one thing keeps Sandra Bullock‘s new political comedy Our Brand Is Crisis from being a biting political satire, but that one thing, or more accurately, one person, is Bullock herself. Director David Gordon Green and screenwriter Peter Straughan insist on tailoring the movie to accommodate Bullock’s well-known klutzy but lovable screen persona, and the result is a black comedy that ultimately proves toothless.

Bullock plays “Calamity” Jane Bodine, a former top flight political campaign consultant who has been in seclusion since her last effort turned into an electoral disaster. A former colleague (Ann Dowd) recruits her to breathe life into the moribund campaign of Pedro Castillo (Joaquim de Almeida), a right-wing Bolivian presidential candidate. Jane is somewhat unsure of herself at first, but when she discovers that one of Castillo’s opponents has hired her arch nemesis Pat Candy (Billy Bob Thornton) as a consultant, Jane’s instincts and will to win kick into high gear. Soon, she and Pat are exchanging the dirtiest of political tricks left and right.

Our Brand Is Crisis is loosely based on a documentary of the same name about the 2003 Bolivian election in which the winning president hired James Carville‘s consulting firm (it’s no coincidence that Thornton looks eerily like Carville).  The fictional Crisis wisely chooses to play the material mostly for laughs, since the actual Bolivian election led to widespread bloodshed. The middle third of the movie is by far the best, essentially a primer on dirty tricks, with Jane and Pat pulling out all the stops. However, while Green and Straughan have no problem portraying Pat as the devil incarnate, Bullock plays Jane as the usual sweet Bullock character looking for some sort of redemption, thus taking the bite out of much of the script’s cynical black humor. The finale actually plays like an early version of the script of Norma Rae. With the right actress in the lead role, like Nicole Kidman, Our Brand of Crisis could have been a 21st-century version of The Candidate. As it is, though, the only brand this movie is promoting is Sandra Bullock.  
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Entourage: Mini-Review

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Adrian Grenier

Movie fame may be fleeting for the Entourage guys

C-The HBO series Entourage ran for eight seasons and 96 episodes. By the end of that time, critics and even most fans agreed that the show had run out of ideas and creative energy. Series creator Doug Ellin has spent the last four years getting the big screen version of Entourage ready but, unfortunately, he seems to have spent more time arranging celebrity cameos and bikini shots than coming up with a fresh story.

The movie takes place shortly after the series ends. Actor Vinnie Chase (Adrian Grenier) has been signed by new studio head Ari Gold (Jeremy Piven) to star in and direct a major film, but the movie is badly over budget and the Texas oilman (Billy Bob Thornton) financing the film gets nervous. Vinnie’s pals are nervous too. Eric (Kevin Connolly) is about to become a daddy, Turtle (Jerry Ferrara) wants to date MMA champ Ronda Rousey, and Johnny Drama (Kevin Dillon) is worried that his role in brother Vinnie’s film may get cut. 

Unless you’re a fan of the HBO series, the above synopsis may not make much sense, and that’s part of Entourage‘s problem. It’s not so much a film about the movie industry, à la Robert Altman‘s The Player, as about four guys who have now struck it rich and whose “problems” involving celebrities and incredibly beautiful women will not resonate with the rest of us. The parts of Entourage that are about the film industry are still clever and even wickedly funny at times, especially Haley Joel Osment in his best adult role as Thornton’s son who shows up to check up on the progress of Vinnie’s movie. Jeremy Piven also displays touches of his Emmy-winning form here as well. As for the rest, the other subplots could appear, minus the profanity and nudity but with more actual jokes, on any network sitcom. At one point in Entourage, Liam Neeson gives Ari the finger. By the end of the movie, those who weren’t fans of the TV series will probably feel as if they’ve been given the finger as well.
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