Last updated on June 9, 2025
A film by Tarik Saleh
With: Fares Fares, Lyna Khoudri, Zineb Triki, Sherwan Haji, Suhaib Neshwan, Cherien Dabis, Hassan El Sayed, Pedram Hajigholi, Mohammed Nehmi, Haitham Elsaadani
Egypt’s most adored actor, George Fahmy is pressured to star in a film commissioned by the highest authorities. He reluctantly accepts the role and finds himself thrown into the inner circle of power. Like a moth drawn to the flame he begins an affair with the mysterious wife of the general overseeing the film.
Our rate: **
The Eagles of the Republic is, as expected, pure Tarik Saleh, though slightly less successful than his previous film (Boy from Heaven). We find the same qualities that were evident in that film: excellent acting, a pleasant comedic tone from the very first minutes, and a strong political theme brought to the forefront: the risk for all Egyptians of being caught by the authorities, from which no one can escape, not even the most famous actors. The pleasant setup then gives way to a more uneven, repetitive development, which gets somewhat bogged down, particularly in its secondary narrative plots. But Saleh does this deliberately, and we wait patiently for the moment when he will exercise his screenwriting skills in a twist that only he knows how to do, one that deserves our attention, a 180-degree turn in the narrative, a radical change of tone. What’s more, this shift is difficult to anticipate and very different from what many overrated directors offer (who shift a more or less serious subject toward farce). Saleh, on the contrary, chooses to go for the hard stuff, the political firebrand, without resorting to provocation or bombast, simply by intensifying the events, drawing us into a dizzying, well thought-out, hyper-clever plot that completely revives our attention. It’s a shame that Lyna Khoudri and Zineb Triki, despite their strong screen presence and radiance, are underutilized, due to lazy writing and insufficiently complex roles.
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