Embodying the true story of Kim Baker, a young smart and courageous journalist, who goes in a mission during war in Afghanistan, where she experiences many danger and was about to lose her life many times, but she faces all that challenges.
Writer and actress tilt between insecurity and bravado, employing dry, observational humour tinged with occasional sentimental flashes only outwardly out of character.
Taking its source material from a genuinely fascinating memoir, the screenplay squanders its potential by delivering a middling mash-up of comedy, thriller and war drama.
The film offers a fresh look at the adrenaline-laced lifestyle of war correspondents and a timely criticism of TV news. And it delivers some laughs, too.
WTF moves with fleet, mostly smart precision, and when it's repetitive... it's meant to emphasize the out-of-body "Kabubble" isolation of Kim's Afghanistan years.
Directors Glenn Ficarra and John Requa move things along fast enough to keep [the problem aspects] from sinking in too deeply, and star Tina Fey holds the spotlight with aplomb.
Tina Fey is the biggest asset but even she's not sufficient to make it worth more than a marginal recommendation and a suggestion to wait until it shows up on home video.
Tina Fey grounds the movie in something real, something urgent and human, and she nearly single-handedly saves the movie from itself. The movie itself isn't particularly serious, but she sure as hell is.
It gives a clear-eyed view of the human costs of war: the physical sacrifices of the military men and women fighting it, the emotional costs to the journalists who cover it and the psychic toll on the civilians in the middle.
It's a morally messy premise. Afghanistan is not Colin Firth. War is not Love Actually. And that is the problem with Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, which is overall a charming comedy about a terrible war.
