“Eagles of the Republic” is a Cairo-set political thriller one can slot into the subsequent class: movement photos about life beneath autocracy that actually really feel fully totally different to have a look at — at least to People — than they’d have six months up to now. That’s because of they hit loads nearer to dwelling now. It could sound off-the-wall to elucidate “Eagles of the Republic” as an “entertaining” saga of repression, nevertheless the central character is a fictional Egyptian movie star, and for its first hour or so the film is vivid and humorous as a result of it invites us to revel throughout the perks and gossipy vanity of his charmed nevertheless flawed existence.
George Fahmy (Fares Fares) is a veteran actor, known as the “Pharoah of the Show,” who carries himself similar to the legend he’s. He’s tall, with glittering darkish eyes and a hawkish profile; he seems like Liam Neeson, with a contact of Harry Dean Stanton’s hangdog melancholy. He’s the number-one box-office star in Egypt, who acts in the whole thing from standing dramas to films with titles like “The First Egyptian in Space.” He’ll throw his weight spherical arguing with the nation’s Muslim censor board (who in no way met a movie they couldn’t try to neuter), and his private life is a litany of scandalous privilege. He occupies a lavish condominium and has a mistress, Donya (Lyne Khoudri), who’s half his age and seems like a development model. (She’s an aspiring actor.)
George takes what he wishes, nevertheless there’s a saddened undertow to him that’s not exhausting to see. Hidden beneath baseball cap and shades, he takes clandestine journeys to the pharmacy to purchase Viagra. He’s separated from his partner (Donia Massoud) and has a loving nevertheless an increasing number of awkward relationship alongside along with his son, Ramy (Suhaib Nashwan), who attends the American School in Cairo. (When the two have drinks and Ramy brings alongside the girl he’s relationship, he has to confirm his father doesn’t hit on her.) Fares Fares is a forceful actor who dramatizes George’s movie-star vanity from the inside out. After which, as he’s gliding by way of life on his cloud of entitlement, he’ll get a reputation asking him to star in a movie commissioned by the Egyptian authorities.
It’s going to be a biopic regarding the nation’s president, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, who received right here to power in 2014 after having staged a military coup. That’s when he toppled Mohamed Morsi, who in 2012 had flip into Egypt’s first democratically elected chief. (Morsi’s rise was propelled by the protest actions of the Arab Spring.) Sisi, who stays to be in power, turned a textbook autocrat, presiding over a military dictatorship. “Eagles of the Republic” is a saga of life beneath that regime. We see innocent people arrested for posting a “treasonous” thought on Fb, and characters perpetually seek the advice of with the “they” who’re hovering over the whole thing — they which means the regime. They don’t appear to be to be messed with.
Tarik Saleh, the film’s writer-director, is of Swedish-Egyptian descent and depends in Sweden, which is why he was able to make “Eagles of the Republic” as an open indictment of life beneath Sisi. That’s the final film in Saleh’s “Cairo trilogy,” after the drug thriller “The Nile Hilton Incident” (2017) and the Muslim clerical-school corruption drama “Cairo Conspiracy” (2022), and for a while it’s an absorbing story.
When George learns that he’s being requested to star in a bit of state-actioned propaganda, a movie that may possible be entitled “Will of the People,” he balks. He’s no fan of Egypt’s dictatorship — and furthermore, he says, how might a star of his look and stature be requested to play Sisi, who’s transient and bald? Nevertheless the precise incontrovertible fact that he’d elevate these objections, in his widespread high-maintenance means, signifies that he’s a bit naïve. The Sisi regime isn’t asking George to star on this movie; it’s telling him. As he grudgingly submits to the duty, getting into into his khaki military costume bedecked with medals, we’re pretty certain that we’re going to see a parable of what happens when movie-star hubris runs into the buzzsaw of authoritarian mercilessness.
For a while, that’s merely what it’s. There’s an individual on the set named Dr. Mansour, carried out by Amr Waked (who’s like a quieter Dennis Farina), and he’s the official who’s there to confirm the whole thing comes out in a signifies that will possible be Sisi-approved. Early on he tells George, “You’re giving a nasty effectivity,” and it’s not because of he’s abruptly turned drama critic. George’s enactment of Sisi’s rise to power is simply too exaggerated, too cartoonish — and that’s because of it’s George’s technique of not giving himself over completely to the operate. It’s his technique of resisting.
Then George will get invited to a correct dinner on the dwelling of the minister of safety (Tamim Heikal). There’s a gaggle of presidency higher-ups there, who seek the advice of with themselves as “eagles of the republic” — that’s, they’re there to survey and defend the nation. Nevertheless they’re truly defending Sisi and his corrupt rule. By this degree George has discovered that he should play the game, and he’s conscious of one of the simplest ways to do it. Nevertheless when he meets the minister’s imperious partner, the Sorbonne-educated, Western-oriented Suzanne (Zineb Triki), a hazard bell goes off. He’s shortly having an affair collectively along with her, which seems a critically dumb issue to do. We predict everyone knows, in our gut, the place the movie is headed.
Nevertheless we don’t. George will get requested to offer a speech as an additional demonstration of his loyalty, and he agrees. The speech happens correct in entrance of Sisi, at a sunlit military parade to commemorate the troopers who died stopping Israel throughout the Yom Kippur (a.okay.a. Ramadan) Wrestle. George offers the speech. And that’s when one factor happens. A spasm of violence. There was a plot in direction of Sisi, inside the kind of a half-baked military coup, and George is appropriate throughout the thick of it. He has been used…not directly.
The “not directly” is what we want to know. Nevertheless that’s the place the movie, to our shock, falls totally apart. Almost the whole thing that happens after the coup attempt is oblique, difficult, garbled, head-scratching. What occurred to Saleh’s filmmaking? Essential as a lot as this second, it was meticulous. Did he depart a bunch of scenes on the cutting-room floor? In the midst of the film’s second half, we’re in a position to piece collectively what happens (form of), nevertheless not in a signifies that makes entire sense, or that’s the least bit dramatically satisfying. And however the movie had been determining such a big and associated theme: the stakes of attempting to placate a regime of ruthless power. “Eagles of the Republic” loses the thread of its story, nevertheless way more disappointingly it leaves these stakes hanging.
