Murray: scene-stealer extraordinaire
The quintessential Bill Murray role of the last decade is his cameo in 2009’s Zombieland, when the actor is briefly mistaken for one of the walking dead. As far as acting parts go, if it weren’t for burnt-out, Murray wouldn’t get out at all.
In his latest role in Rock the Kasbah, he plays Richie Lanz, central figure in the story of a played-out music producer who takes his last remaining client on a tour of Afghanistan, only to have her fly the coop.
Supporting players include Zooey Deschanel (who really can sing), as said talent; Bruce Willis as “Bombay Brian,” a half-fried soldier-of-misfortune; Scott Caan and Danny McBride as Jake and Nick, arms merchants without a leg to stand on; and Kate Hudson as a prostitute named Merci, which I suppose tells us what type of, um, service she provides.
There’s also Salima, played by Leem Lubany, one of the stars of the 2013 Oscar-nominated Palestinian drama Omar. She’s much less than that in this one, even though the film includes a dedication to her real-life counterparts; i.e., Afghan women who braved derision and even death to perform on their country’s version of American Idol.
The dedication is too little, too late for a film that can’t seem to take its eyes off Murray’s performance. When he hears Salima (a.k.a. “the girl in the red burka”), singing songs by Yusaf Islam (a.k.a. Cat Stevens), in a remote cave, he convinces her to try out for Afghan Star in defiance of her father and the rest of the village elders. Surely Allah wouldn’t want that voice to remain hidden!
It’s a lovely message of tolerance, but it’s trampled by a script from producer/writer Mitch Glazer (Scrooged), that emphasizes lunacy over logic and idiocy over emotion. Richie, who claims to have put the “Ma” in Madonna, gets caught up in a vague but clearly unwise arms delivery engineered by Nick and Jake, whose business cards read International Ballistics and Munitions: IBM. His dealings with Salima are perfunctory at best, an apparent afterthought by both character and filmmakers of what should have been the film’s leitmotif.
Director Barry Levinson has been down this road before, or at least driven into the same neighbourhood. His Wag the Dog (1997), envisioned a phoney war spawned from an unholy alliance between Hollywood and Washington. Man of the Year (2006), imagined a comedian running for president, while What Just Happened (2008), was a straightup satire of celebrity.
You can see in Rock the Kasbah echoes of the film it might have been — a sharp examination of the corrupting power of overwhelming military might in the vein of Catch-22 or Levinson’s own Good Morning, Vietnam. But it’s really more of an examination of what happens when you give Murray absolute power to steal every scene he’s in.
This extends even to the film’s climax, in which Salima follows up a lovely rendition of Stevens’ Wild World with his 1971 hit Peace Train. It’s so good that audiences may be tempted to clap along, though if they do it’ll be the only applause this film gets.