WTF

|

Paramount Pictures

The film Whiskey Tango Foxtrot tosses Tina Fey (of SNL and 30 Rock fame) into a war zone, as reporter Kim Baker, a desk jockey turned adrenaline junkie. While Fey has been careful to say in the media that the film "has nothing to do with what should be done about Afghanistanit is 100 percent not that," the whole plot turns on how difficult it is for people who are caught up in the heat of battlecombatants, civilians, and pressto keep perspective.

"I've gotta go. I'm starting to feel like this is normal. You know this is not normal, right?" Baker says to her war photographer friend-with-benefits (played by a casually debauched Martin Freeman) as she tosses clothes into a suitcase in her grimy Kabul bedroom. Unremarked uponthough the film does not entirely ignore itis that she, unlike the Afghans she meets, has the luxury of leaving "the Kabubble" when she's had enough of war.

Katherine Mangu-Ward