“How did we get here?” George Fahmy asks his fellow actress Rula, who wields a bruised face after an encounter with Egypt’s minister of defense. This question is well deep into Eagles of the Republic’s storyline, a web of governmental deception, persuasion, and gaslighting. It’s a question that seems to understand its context, in which a famous actor suddenly getting into a political entanglement, with bitter hilarity. The film becomes more than your standard thriller affair, especially when it can openly criticize a country’s political snares and the cult of celebrity status.
Eagles of the Republic is part of director Tarik Saleh’s Cairo-based trilogy, following 2017’s The Nile Hilton Incident and 2022’s Boy from Heaven. However, the thematic thread is not so much targeted for the sentimental tourist; instead, Saleh utilizes actor Fares Fares to lead the genre Trojan horse. Handsomely serious and tall, Fares’ roles as a beleaguered detective, colonel of the National Security, and successful actor invite audiences interested in a police procedural or Hollywood industry, only to find that Fares’ role is the court jester, yanked around by shadowy puppeteers of authority, and alluring women with secrets.
Saleh’s latest installment feels full to the brim with unbridled satire disguised as national normalcy. Fares is George, who is seemingly threatened into accepting a movie role as current President el-Sisi (seemingly, as in he finds that his surrounding circle of friends and family is being kidnapped or pressured to speak against George until he takes the role). George is reluctant both on a professional level (“[el-Sisi] is 5’1!”) and on a personal level, but we can see how much little wiggle there is to make his own decisions once he realizes he’s on the government watchlist following a party conversation about pro-democracy.
It shouldn’t be surprising that Saleh would receive the same welcome treatment from Egypt’s government as Jafar Panahi if he were to return to Iran. Residing in Sweden, Saleh’s career has been safely grounded in Western and European productions without the ironclad hold of his original country. However, the work of his original scripts display more than an anti-governmental viewpoint; Saleh also believes in the good, complicated nature of the characters, who are often pawns to the gamemakers. He makes fun of George’s lifestyle of debauchery and detachment but relents to sympathy once George realizes that he can’t escape the decisions already set out for him. George’s direct opponent is Dr. Mansour (Amr Waked), who is a producer on George’s film and close personnel of the president. Though President el-Sisi is the clear figurehead to appease, it seems more alarming to upset Dr. Mansour, who generally keeps his intimidating presence at a cool-headed level as he speaks with George with clear intentions to blackmail or kneel to the government’s demands.
While I found The Nile Hilton Incident to be nearly empty once its missive became clear, Eagles of the Republic gives more opportunities to walk beside characters on studio lots, the red carpet, and casual encounters on the streets. Sometimes a little jazzy riff plays as George drives around in his Jaguar. Sometimes we see moviemaking in action, or a poster of George’s previous films (for this, I will not let go of The First Egyptian in Space), or the actor versus the Actor (“That’s a line from The Impossible Choice,” his son says when George tries to share an emotional connection). Its topic-expansion can meander a bit too long, but it’s forgiven once you reach the last thirty minutes, in which the question “How did we get here?” is rocketed into a climactic tornado that is befitting for a satire of this magnitude.
Eagles of the Republic
2025
dir. Tarik Saleh
129 min.
Opens Friday, 4/24 @ Kendall Square Cinema
