Whiskey Tango Foxtrot(2016)

Paramount Pictures

R
Rated R for pervasive language, some sexual content, drug use and violent war images
1h 52m

Release Date: Mar 4, 2016 | Wide

A journalist recounts her wartime coverage in Afghanistan.

Official Website

Releases

Original Release | Mar 4, 2016

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Box Office Results

Results

Opening Weekend US & Canada:
$7,450,275
Total US & Canada:
$23,083,334
Total International
$1,888,805
Total Worldwide:
$24,972,139

Current Showtimes

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(U.S. Only)

Director & Top Cast

Glenn Ficarra
Director

John Requa
Director

Glenn Ficarra

Technical Specifications

Sound Mix: Datasat,Dolby Digital

Aspect Ratio: 1.85 : 1

Other Details

Country of Origin: United States

Language: English,Pashtu,Dari,French

Summaries

Plot Summary

In 2006 Kim Baker is partying at a house in Kabul, Afghanistan with mostly military men while bombs are heard going off in the distance. A few minutes later, everyone in the house in a scramble as they struggle to get news information about this latest bombing. Kim is frustrated that the phones have just gone down and so she dons a Flack jacket, helmet and news jacket and goes out on the street at the site of the bombing with her satellite cell phone to try to get through to her office in New York. There is chaos at the site of the bombing as Kim tries to get the story. She is frustrated as a local tries to molest her and her cell phone goes dead.3 years earlier, dissatisfied with the state of her career covering low-profile stories for VBC World News, television journalist Kim Baker (Tina Fey) agrees to take a short 3-months assignment as a war correspondent in Afghanistan during Operation Enduring Freedom, to the disappointment of her boyfriend Chris (Josh Charles), who also spends a lot of time traveling. The assignment was offered to unmarried and childless staff at the office, and for the back-office staff this is a great opportunity to get in front of the camera.Assigned low-budget living quarters with other international journalists, she begins friendships with noted BBC correspondent Tanya Vanderpoel (Margot Robbie) and openly lecherous Scottish freelance photographer Iain MacKelpie (Martin Freeman). Kim is a complete greenhorn at the beginning and waves around her wad of US dollars in the open. Her fixer Fahim used to be a doctor. Tall Brian (Nicholas Braun) is Kim's cameraman and Nic (Steve Peacocke) is Kim's Canadian alpha male bodyguard with a disguised Australian accent.Shakira (Sheila Vand) is a Lebanese reporter who works alongside Kim and Tanya. Immediately after Kim settles in her living quarters, Tanya takes her permission to sleep with Nic, as she says that the Kiwi and Aussie guys are much better than the Americans.After a period of adjustment aided by her Afghan "fixer" Fahim Ahmadzai (Christopher Abbott), she begins taking well to the assignment, eliciting frank remarks on camera from soldiers questioning the value of their assignment there, and putting herself in harm's way to capture combat incidents on video. Lance Corporal Coughlin says that the war in Afghanistan is a forgotten war.American Marines commander General (previously Colonel) Hollanek (Billy Bob Thornton) takes a dim view of her, as an inexperienced nuisance. Hollanek assigns a tent with shower (called a wet Hooch) to Kim at Forward Operating Bases where she travels in military helicopter.Kim once stops an entire convoy as she had to urinate urgently, and that's when the convoy came under enemy fire. Kim ignores instructions to get out of the vehicle to record videos of the attack. Kim hits the night life in Kabul with Tanya and Ian. Kim learns that in Afghanistan nothing is what it seems. She helps a destitute boy with $100 when she finds him crying over broken eggs, and later finds the same boy running the same scam again. Whiskey Tango Foxtrot is the code for WTF.Despite the danger, Kim stays in Afghanistan for months, then years beyond her original assignment. She catches Chris unprepared with a middle-of-the-night video call, and finds him with another woman, ending their relationship. Against her better judgment, she begins a sexual relationship with Iain, which over time also develops into a more personal one. Although her status as a woman presents challenges in a society which places restrictive roles on women, she also uses it to her advantage.Kim researches a story about wells built by US marines being blown up in villages. Kim gains access to women in a village who explain that they've been sabotaging the US-built well because they welcome the daily walk to the river away from the men, and recklessly carrying a camera under a burqa to record a religious demonstration. She also walks a tightrope, taking advantage of the thinly veiled sexual interest of Afghani Attorney General Ali Massoud Sadiq (Alfred Molina) to use him as a source. Fahim - who treated opium addicts before the war - cautions her, pointing out that danger can be like a drug, addictive. Sadiq introduces Kim to several known warlords, who were previously inaccessible to western media.Despite their mutual friendliness, Kim remains in competition with other journalists (Including Tanya) for stories and for resources from their employers back home. This fight intensifies when Tanya gets a terrific story when she is close to the scene when American forces drop a bomb on a Taliban convoy via drones. Kim realizes that she hasn't had a story on the air in over a year. She even asks Ali for information, when he propositions her to be her boyfriend.Kim flies to New York to argue for more support from her network's new boss, only to discover that Tanya is slated to take over from her. Kim confronts Tanya, and that's when Tanya tells Kim that the Marine Kim interviewed in her first embed was transferred to the Helmand province & had his legs blown off.Meanwhile, Iain is kidnapped for ransom while traveling cross-country to cover a developing story that Kim had been working on. Kim returns "home" to Afghanistan, where she blackmails her "special friend", Ali, for information (She shows Ali a video of him dancing in front of her at a party where Alcohol was served) about Iain's whereabouts and impresses upon General Hollanek the political value to him of rescuing Iain.The mission - accompanied by Kim's cameraman - is a success, both militarily and from a journalistic point of view. However, shortly after Iain's rescue Kim becomes disillusioned, with her tentative relationship as well as her station. She then bids farewell to her colleagues and to Fahim and returns to the U.S. to stay.After returning, she looks up the Marine Lance Corporal Coughlin (Evan Jonigkeit) who was transferred, apparently because of his on-camera comments to her, and subsequently lost both of his legs to an IED. She tries to apologize for the consequences of her actions, but he refuses to let her take the blame. She moves on to an on-camera desk job, where she later finds herself interviewing Iain, who is going to be in New York soon as part of a tour for his new book, and who invites her to meet him for a coffee.

Storyline

2003. After careful consideration, Kim Baker, a news copywriter, decides to leave the relative comfort of a New York desk job and serious boyfriend Chris to accept the assignment to work for three months as on-camera reporter in war torn Afghanistan, as her news agency is looking for anyone within their ranks to fill immediately the empty voids overseas. Her only experience of being in such an environment is going through hostile zone training a few years earlier. Immediately upon her arrival in Afghanistan, she realizes that she is ill-prepared emotionally for this assignment, not only enduring the dangers of the war itself, but also the conditions of everyday life, including largely been seen by men as only a "piece of ass" and a distraction despite her being considered average looking back home and not being overtly sexual, and being an individual with a small bladder who is nonetheless told to stay hydrated at all times. She is largely assisted in navigating this new life by Tanya Vanderpoel, a fellow female western correspondent, and Fahim Ahmadzai, her Afghan translator guide. As time goes on, Kim finds that she not only may have a specific and important voice within the press corps, but that she may be losing touch with her life back in the States for good or bad. In addition, she will have to decide how much she is willing to risk, not only for herself but that for her colleagues, to get that next important story. She also has to figure out how much of what she does truly is her, and how much is being as she and the other western press corps members state is being in the "Kabubble". What may also affect her life is how much the war in Afghanistan is overtaken by other world events for which the American public is wanting information, and thus if Afghanistan has a specific time span in her life regardless of how much she may want to stay to tell what she sees as its important stories. — Huggo 2003. Kim Baker is a writer at a TV news network in New York. The network needs a reporter in Afghanistan and, as her career has stalled and her life is in a rut, she (apprehensively) takes the job. Nothing could have prepared her for life in Kabul and what she'll see and experience - she is truly a duck out of water. Over time, however, she adapts and even thrives. More than thrives, she seems to live for the danger and excitement, a fact that not only endangers her own life but that of her colleagues too. — grantss Eager for a new professional challenge, TV reporter Kim Baker (Tina Fey) decides to serve as a foreign correspondent in Afghanistan, where she is embedded with a Marine unit. During her time abroad, she is forced to contend with a fiery U.S. general (Billy Bob Thornton), and befriends a fellow reporter (Margot Robbie) and a British photographer (Martin Freeman)..