Once again navigating a labyrinth of corruption and bad behavior inside contemporary Egypt, writer-director Tarik Saleh delivers another solid, thought-provoking thriller with Eagles of the Republic. Both entertaining and insightful, not to mention darkly funny in its first half, the Swedish-Egyptian filmmaker follows up The Nile Hilton Incident and Cairo Conspiracy with a crime-ridden drama about a famous actor who’s forced to play President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi in a biopic, then pays a high price for his success.
Reteaming with star Fares Fares, who headlined the above-mentioned films, Saleh completes what could be considered his Cairo trilogy, with each movie tackling a hot-button social or political issue through well-crafted genre storytelling. If Nile Hilton focused on drugs and police malfeasance and Conspiracy took on fraud in the world of Muslim clerical schools, Eagles highlights the dirty dealings between the government and the film industry, showing how popular artists are coopted — or rather coerced — into making works of propaganda in a country leaving them few other options.
Eagles of the Republic
The Bottom Line
Smart and timely.
Venue: Cannes Film Festival (Competition)
Cast: Fares Fares, Zineb Triki, Lyna Khoudri, Amr Waked, Cherien Dabis, Ahmed Kairy, Sherwan Haji, Suhaib Nashwan
Director, screenwriter: Tarik Saleh
2 hours 9 minutes
The opening reels, which both mock and celebrate the life of fictional Egyptian movie star George El-Nabawi (Fares), are filled with more comedy than suspense. But as Saleh’s script advances, and the actor sees the walls closing in around him on all sides, the tone grows more desperate and the film turns into a straight-out thriller. At a time when movies seem divided between commercial fare and works made strictly for the arthouse, Saleh occupies an intriguing middle ground here, directing a crime story that keeps us engaged while saying plenty about the world we live in — or at least about Egypt right now.
El-Nabawi, who’s known throughout the land as the “Pharoah of the Screen,” has headlined countless blockbusters in his country’s longstanding film industry, embodying the kind of success most Egyptians could only dream of. But we immediately see that his life is not all it’s cracked up to be: His marriage has fallen apart and his teenage son, Ramy (Suhaib Nashwan), seems to resent him for being a negligent dad. His much younger mistress, Donya (Lyna Khoudri from Papicha), seems to resent him as well, and it doesn’t help that El-Nabawi has to go out in disguise to a pharmacy in order to buy Viagra.
But these issues are minor compared to what happens when Dr. Mansour Rula (Amr Waked), an official working directly for El-Sisi’s office, corners El-Nabawi into playing the current president in a new movie celebrating the reigning leader’s military exploits before his election in 2014. Much fun is initially made of the fact that El-Nabawi and El-Sisi look nothing alike — “He’s been bald since kindergarten!” the star clamors — but the reality is that the actor has little choice in the matter, especially when the life of his son is threatened.
El-Nabawi soon ropes in a hit director to helm the project, but on the first day of shooting it’s clear that none of them will have any say in a project overseen by Rula, who sits behind a monitor and comments on each scene with regards to how it portrays the president.
Censorship rules over the industry and corruption over the rest of society. When El-Nabawi is not on set, he attends various galas and dinners in town, getting cozy with other powerful higher-ups, including the minister of defense (Tamim Heikal). Unfortunately, the actor also gets cozy with the minister’s outspoken girlfriend (Cherien Dabis), putting himself at even more risk when the two begin having an affair.
Saleh juggles these dual narrative strands — the troubled movie shoot and El-Nabawi’s harried personal life — with relative ease, even if there are moments when the plot feels a tad convoluted. But everything comes together in a decidedly darker third act that brings the actor face-to-face with the actual president. Suddenly, reality takes over and what felt like a cheesy movie (the one being shot, that is) has dire consequences for all involved.
It makes sense that Saleh doesn’t live in Egypt, because it’s hard to imagine anyone residing there who could make a film that so outwardly criticizes the current regime, whether it’s the countless corrupt officials or the methods of coercion used by a government that claims to be a democracy but feels more like a military dictatorship. The closing reels are especially grim in that sense, highlighted by a memorable scene, set in a helicopter, in which El-Nabawi witnesses just how ruthless El-Sisi’s people can be.
Fares — who, like the director, is half-Swedish (the other half is Lebanese) — embodies the movie star perfectly, channeling the actor’s egomania but also his desire to live freely in a country that offers little freedom, even for people as rich and renowned as El-Nabawi. “You played your role perfectly,” someone ironically tells him toward the end, as he realizes success means nothing when everyone is a puppet to power in one way or another.
Eagles of the Republic — whose title sounds like one of El-Nabawi’s many box-office hits — offers a clever lesson in how truth can be scarier than fiction, especially in a place where movies serve as both popular entertainment and weapons for the men (they’re all men) in charge. Like his previous films, including his underrated Chris Pine effort, The Contractor, Saleh once again proves himself capable of delivering a solid genre flick with a dark message beneath all the action. He may not live in Egypt, but he channels the country’s thrills and terrors as if he were a star there himself.
