Hollywood creates a Kabubble WHISKY TANGO FOXTROT Tina Fey stars, produces and dedicates this war correspondent film to her late father, Donald Fey "Veteran and Journalist". The film is based on the book "The Taliban Shuffle" by American journalist Kim Barker, recounting her five years as a female war correspondent in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
When "Kim Baker" (played by Fey) first arrives as a rookie in Kabul in 2004, she is out of her depth but quickly earns a reputation for brinkmanship and scoring cred points as a plucky "embed" journalist. Like her peers, Baker develops the addiction that besieges war reporters; she constantly seeks the rush of being on the frontline. Over time the mainstream news networks turn their focus from Afghanistan to Iraq and interest for Baker's hard won stories wanes. We see the ruthlessness that exists amongst journalists for scoops and the pressurised environment in which they work. Living in a "Kabubble" as they call the bizarre mix of ever present danger and foreignness, the journalists, photographers and their minders live in a frat house atmosphere with constant partying and heavy drinking interrupted only by bombs and the pressure to file stories from the frontline.
The use of hand held cameras in the streets of Kabul jostles the viewer inside dusty cars and further unease is created by the sound design where, at times, the volume of the surrounding field threatens to drown out the dialogue. Despite the gritty realism of the film's visual and sound elements there is an implausible plot detail involving the blowing up of a village well which contradicts the tone of naturalism. Add Tina Fey's unshakeable Los Angeles demeanour and the blonde bombshell treatment of Margot Robbie as a rival correspondent, Tanya Vanderpoel, and the film has the Hollywood stamp on it. These odd casting choices add to the dissonance between a complex subject matter and flippancy. Baker's Afghan minder, Fahim Ahmadzai, is played, controversially, by an American actor Christopher Abbott.
For his part Abbott does an excellent job of portraying an Afghan man honourably attempting to cross the cultural/gender abyss using English as his second language. Ironically the relationship of Baker and Ahmadzai is one of the few poignant elements of the film and something of a retreat from the shallow relationships of hardened war hacks. One of whom is a dissolute Scottish journalist, played by Martin Freedman. Billy Bob Thornton faultlessly plays an ultra focused US Marine colonel.
There is a haunting reference to an image of the brilliant Pulitzer prizewinning photojournalist, the late Anja Niedringhaus (killed in action in Afghanistan in 2014). In the film Kim Baker is wearing a blue burqa and a hand held camera shoots from inside her burqa looking out at the world through the fabric grille. This is an exact image of the still by Niedringhaus.
The film is reminiscent of the absurdist war comedy, "M.A.S.H". Other writers have documented the peculiarly comic unreality of the foreign journalist's life in a war zone ("Absurdistan" by Eric Campbell, "Despatches" by Michael Herr). A female-positioned gallows humour successfully sustains the script and narrative but the strength of it seems to be undermined by the casting and incongruously smooth presentation of the female characters.