Screenplay:
Robert CarlockCinematography:
Xavier GrobetComposer:
Nick UrataCast:
Tina Fey, Margot Robbie, Martin Freeman, Christopher Abbott, Billy Bob Thornton, Alfred Molina, Nicholas Braun, Stephen Peacocke, Evan Jonigkeit, Sheila Vand (more)VOD (5)
Plots(1)
Glenn Ficarra and John Requa direct this film adaptation of Kim Barker's memoir 'The Taliban Shuffle'. Tina Fey plays Kim Barker, an American journalist working as a war correspondent in Afghanistan and Pakistan during Operation Enduring Freedom. The story follows her experiences reporting on the tumultuous conflict, including the friendship she forms with a fellow journalist from Scotland (Martin Freeman) and the difficulties she encounters working as a woman in the Middle Eastern war zone. (Paramount Home Entertainment)
(more)Reviews (3)
I don’t even feel like this movie is a comedy. It views the situation in Afghanistan rather cynically and – in my opinion – relatively realistically. Tina Fey plays a real cow of a journalist who managed to piss me off several times throughout the movie. But after all, journalists can’t do it any other way and they mostly stick their nose where it doesn’t belong, as long as they get interesting shots. They selfishly don’t care about the fact that they threaten everyone around them. But American journalist Tina Fey doesn’t just attacks journalism here. She calls a spade a spade even when it comes to religion and so Afghanistan gets a thrashing, which is actually good. It increases the realism and I’d really like to know where they shot the movie, because I felt like I was really with them in Kabul. However, at the same time, the movie mentions the American army, which had nothing to do there at the time and behaved just like NATO in the early 1990s in Yugoslavia. The American Journalist is sort of amovie non-partisan and Russian filmmaking propaganda has a lot to learn from it. There’s also a lot of booze flowing in it, and here and there, there’s a Muslim who’s helping the Western world. It’s nothing for the locals, but it’s sufficient as a peek behind the curtain.
()
A somewhat different take on the war in Afghanistan than what I’m used to. I had to double check if the film was really made by Americans because it lacked the standard melodramatic and patriotic scenes. Instead, there was some oddly sophisticated humor, excellent acting (Billy Bob Thornton, Martin Freeman), very decent acting (Tina Fey, Margot Robbie), and a nightclub straight out of Far Cry 3. Very close to five stars.
()
The acting is good, but this movie didn't give me what I was expecting. I guess I thought it would be a war with more humor, that it would be somewhat entertaining, and then the emotions would come into play, but it's not very entertaining, although it seems like there was an effort to make it so. Tina is traditionally fine, while Martin Freeman is a bit different.
()