‘Whiskey Tango Foxtrot’
› Rating: R for “pervasive language, some sexual content, drug use and violent war images” › Running time: 111 minutes
Journalism is having a moment at the movies.
Days after the journalism procedural “Spotlight” won best picture at the Academy Awards, Paramount is releasing “Whiskey Tango Foxtrot,” a comic drama about war reporting with Tina Fey as a rookie correspondent finding her way.
Fey plays Kim Baker, a 40-something New York TV producer summoned to a meeting of “unmarried, childless personnel” to consider a three-month assignment embedded with U.S. troops in Afghanistan. Three months becomes three years, 2004 to 2006, as Baker evolves from clueless newbie to savvy reporter, navigating the country’s repressive cultural norms and the off-the-clock lifestyle of drunken debauchery shared by her expatriate colleagues.
Longtime Fey collaborator Robert Carlock (“30 Rock,” ”Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt”) based the screenplay on former Chicago Tribute reporter Kim Barker’s memoir “The Taliban Shuffle: Strange Days in Afghanistan and Pakistan.”