‘Eagles Of The Republic' Review: The Terrific Fares Fares Stars In Tarik Saleh's Precision-Tooled Political Thriller

Yahoo

20-05-2025

Swedish director Tarik Saleh would be a left-field but great pick for a Bond movie, and the third entry in his Cairo trilogy — following The Nile Hilton Incident (2017) and Boy from Heaven (2022) — is the proof. Like his previous films, it stars terrific Lebanese-Swedish actor Fares Fares (an actor so good they named him twice), in another precision-tooled political thriller that starts with a good deal more humor that seen previously in his works but rapidly ratchets up the tension for a shattering climax. Deftly and daringly blending fact and fiction, it shares DNA with István Szabó's 1981 Nazi-era drama Mephisto.
Like Mephisto, it is about a self-seeking actor whose arrogance gets him into bad company. Fares plays George Fahmy, the biggest movie star in Egypt. They call him 'The Pharaoh of the Screen,' and that adoration has been the ruin of him. Having abandoned his wife and son, he lives with his girlfriend Donya (Lyna Khoudri), a beautiful aspiring actress young enough to be his daughter. George's career is mapped out in the opening credits, a sequence made up of lurid film posters (including, we later find out, for one called The First Egyptian in Space). Somehow, George has kept Donya under the radar, but there have been rumblings about his behavior for some time, as is about to become apparent.
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Taking Donya on a date, George encounters a coterie of his peers, who try to involve him in the informal militia they have formed. 'We all have to protect our country,' says one. 'The enemy is everywhere.' George declines their offer but becomes concerned when his latest co-star, Rula Haddad (Cherien Dabis), comes to his house, claiming she is being forced into a TV interview where she will be pressured to dish dirt on him. Rula keeps mum, but their new film together already is in trouble with the country's hatchet-faced panel of censors, since it involves a scene in which an unmarried couple suggestively share their cigarettes. 'What's this disgrace?' says one. 'Everything you do is a sin.'
His long-suffering manager Fawzy (Ahmed Kairy) spells it out for him ('George, they are after you'), and while driving out late at night the actor is pulled over by a soldier who shows him a picture of his son and warns of the high incidence of traffic 'accidents' that happen at the American university where he is studying. Shaken, George goes straight to his ex-wife's house, where the boy is, thankfully, unscathed. 'Whose wife or daughter did you sleep with this time?' she sneers. 'Aren't you too old for that?'
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Feeling the heat, George accepts an offer to take the lead in a largely fictional and completely hagiographic biopic of (current) Egyptian President Al-Sisi. George resists at first, but it soon becomes clear that dark forces are at play, none darker than the sinister Dr. Mansour (Amr Waked), a shady government official supervising the film and effectively serving as producer. George brings in a friend to direct, asking him if he can 'turn this shit into something decent.' George Fahmy doesn't make bad films, says George, but he does make bad choices, and this one could end up being the death of him.
Saleh, and Fares, have a lot of fun with the character of George, notably in a very funny scene where the aging lothario stops off at a pharmacy to buy Viagra. The pharmacist recognizes him ('I download all your movies!') and demands a selfie, adding that Cialis is a better alternative ('It will make you harder than the Sphinx!'). After this, however, Eagles of the Republic becomes exponentially darker, as George finds himself getting deeper and deeper into the president's pocket, to the point that he even agrees to make a speech at an important military parade to commemorate the Yom Kippur War.
As in the previous films in the trilogy, there is a certain sense of inevitability to the events that follow, spiraling out of control in ways that George cannot fight, certainly not after he blithely embarks on a dangerous affair with a senior politician's wife — unaware that Dr. Mansour has him under close surveillance and that he is being manipulated by rival factions within the military. Unwittingly, George pulls everyone and everything down with him, finally facing the consequence of his actions in a harrowing helicopter ride.
Although it is of a kind with the other Cairo movies, Eagles of the Republic arguably is the strongest, possibly because there's so much rich real-world source material to draw on. It's also a brilliantly executed satire on the film industry, and a haunting reminder of what happens when you lie down with dogs.
Title: Eagles of the RepublicFestival: Cannes (Competition)Sales: Playtime GroupDirector-screenwriter: Tarik SalehCast: Fares Fares, Lyna Khoudri, Zineb, Amr Waked, Cherien Dabis, Ahmed KairyRunning time: 2 hr 9 min
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