Our pick, streaming: Special Correspondents with Ricky Gervais and Eric Bana
By Brad Newsome
Ricky Gervais and Eric Bana are decent fun in this pleasant but not overly memorable little flick. It's a gentle comedy of a kind you can imagine one of Gervais' more uncomplicated characters enjoying with a nice hot cuppa and a packet of chocolate digestives. Bana plays Frank Bonneville, a hard-bitten news reporter for a New York radio station. He's something of a local celebrity, and he's a whiz at impersonating police so he can get into crime scenes and file colourful, dramatic reportage from his mobile phone. But he's not happy. He is, as he puts it, a "big, drunk, angry fish in a shitty little pond". Special Correspondents being a remake of a French film, Frank has a certain Gallic bluntness and hauteur in his disdain for meek audio engineer Ian (Gervais). It's a disdain shared by Ian's wife, Eleanor (Vera Farmiga), who longs for the excitement he can't provide. Frank and Ian soon find themselves thrown together and sent to cover a civil war in Ecuador, only to lose their passports on the way to the airport. They decide to stay in New York and file fake reports, aided by a couple of Spanish-speaking dimwits (America Ferrara and Raul Castillo) who shout nonsense in the background for added authenticity. Soon, though, the stakes are raised and Frank and Ian find themselves in much hotter water than they anticipated. Gervais, who wrote and directed the film, stays well within his comfort zone, hitting plenty of familiar notes. Bana is a supercar stuck in traffic, never given the opportunity to put his foot down in a dramatic or comedic sense. Kelly Macdonald is sweet as the radio-station colleague who has a gentle crush on Ian, and Benjamin Bratt is entertaining as a rival reporter who's just as much of a fake.
Special Correspondents is on Netflix from Friday April 29.
Special Correspondents, Ricky Gervais and Eric Bana. Credit:Kerry Hayes/Netfilx
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