Directed by: Glenn Ficarra and John Requa
Starring: Tina Fey, Margot Robbie, Billy Bob Thornton, Martin Freeman, Alfred Molina, Josh Charles, Christopher Abbott
What exactly is this movie? A fish out of water comedy? Only for parts and these are the scenes shown in the trailer. A Tina Fey starring vehicle? You bet. Many of the people in this movie seem to be standing around waiting for Fey to show up and give them something to do. A docudrama about the war in Afghanistan? An insider's look into the media coverage of the war? There is a little of everything and it all adds up to nothing. The movie is based on true events, but it is lifeless and excruciatingly boring. In the end, how does Fey's Kim Baker feel about the war? What starts out as a three-month assignment turns into three years, yet she seems hardly affected by the death, explosions, and violence she witnesses. Fey's performance doesn't allow us inside, so why should we care about her or anything else?
The trailers promise a comedy where the unprepared Kim Baker is thrust headlong into a war she is not prepared to handle. Sometimes, movies can be a pleasant surprise and become something deeper than what is in the trailers. Whiskey Tango Foxtrot (get it?) is not such a movie. Yes, we get the trademark Fey snark in the beginning, but while the war devolves into a mess, she keeps it at arm's length and us too. She works, goes to all-night drinking parties with co-workers, coldly sleeps with some guys, and back to work again. Her long-distance boyfriend (Charles) eventually cheats on her since they are 5,000 miles apart, but there wasn't much there to begin with. It is more of a relief when this subplot reaches its conclusion.
One of the guys she sleeps with is Scottish reporter Iain MacKelpie (Freeman), who has a caddish reputation, but falls for Kim. He turns out to be pretty sincere guy, but their relationship never goes anywhere. Even after Iain is kidnapped and rescued in less time than it takes to actually fly to Afghanistan, we see them still playing the cool and unaffected card with each other. "I've been through worse kidnappings," Iain says. Kim also develops friendships with a no-nonsense general (Thornton), the Afghan prime minister (Molina), and her Afghan guide (Abbott). Each only seems to exist to share scenes with Fey and then go back into suspended animation, I suppose.
Margot Robbie is also on hand as TV journalist Tanya, who never seems to do any actual work. She shows Kim the Kabul party scene and gets drunk with her at loud parties with pulsating music and dancing. Loud parties in movies haven't been funny or entertaining since Animal House (with the exception of Sixteen Candles and Revenge of the Nerds). There is nothing less fascinating than watching people take enough shots to kill a small horse and scream loudly enough to show us they are letting off steam. What does Tanya have to let off steam about? Her only function seems to be to wait for Kim to get off work so she can go drinking with her. Tanya does appear in a later scene where she is offered the job Kim thinks she is earmarked for, but she is an unnecessary character despite being played by the gorgeous Robbie.
The movie doesn't seem to know how Kim feels about her situation. In one scene, she tells someone how Tanya was nearly killed and how she was envious of that. Then, in another later scene and without explanation, she is fighting to stay in Afghanistan even after her network superiors tell her that people don't really care about that war anymore. I was confused by this swerve, but the movie never really lets us see inside Kim anyway. Fey protects her too much. She rarely displays vulnerability or is touched by anything. There is a wall around her we can't see beyond. So why even bother making a movie about her?
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