Eagles of the Republic is the concluding chapter of Tarik Saleh’s Cairo trilogy. The second part, Boy From Heaven, premiered during the 2022 Cannes Film Festival. It won the Best Screenplay Award, but more importantly, it was number one on my Disapproval list that year, even beating Triangle of Sadness. That is quite an impressive feat. The film was later renamed Cairo Conspiracy, which didn’t make it any more palatable. I haven’t watched the first part of the trilogy, The Nile Hilton Incident (2017). My expectations for Saleh’s new offering, presented in this year’s Cannes competition, were low. Anyone who finds a scene funny where a famous actor goes to the pharmacy to get Viagra will have a head start.

Who are the Eagles of the Republic?

The authoritarian regime pressures Egypt’s iconic actor George Fahmy (Fares Fares) to star in a propaganda biopic glorifying minister Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. He is separated from his wife but has a young mistress (Lyna Khoudri). As he grapples with fame, power, and corruption, George’s dangerous liaison with the defense minister’s enigmatic wife, Suzanne (Zineb Triki), pulls him deeper into a web of intrigue or whatever. What starts as an attempt at satire of celebrity life supposedly escalates into a tense political thriller, unveiling the dark undercurrents of Egypt’s film industry and the risks of challenging a military dictatorship. The question is how successfully the film weaves these elements together. Most of the critics were not overly amused.

Someone on X, not necessarily a critic, called the film his “first competition dud”. Apparently, he missed Eddington three days earlier. It would be easy to simply say that my low expectations were met, but the new film is, at least, livelier than its predecessor. The main problem is that it never rises above an all-too-straightforward depiction of the events. That applies to the script as well as the cinematic aspects. The attempts at satire are obvious, and the jokes are lame. When the film ramps up the thriller aspects with a supposed twist towards the end, it would have been too late, even if the final setpiece was utterly engrossing, which it isn’t.

Eagles of the Republic clocks in at 129 minutes, and it is nowhere near justifying that running time. The film is a Swedish major, even though the entire dialogue is in Arabic. During a meeting a few days before the premiere with the co-producer, Film i Väst, Saleh explained that some scenes were shot in Gothenburg. He asked us to try to find out when the Swedish city acted as a stand-in for Egyptian locations. That became my main concern during the latter half since it gave me something to be invested in. However, I must admit that I failed the test, so at least one thing was not obvious about the film.

At 9,000,000 EUR, Eagles of the Republic is supposedly one of the most expensive Arabic-language films ever produced. It is difficult to determine whether the film will prove to be profitable. On an artistic level, there is little to recommend about the film. It looks “good” in a glossy kind of way, but few images are bound to linger in the mind once the spectator is liberated from the 129-minute session. It is nowhere close to being on this year’s Disapproval list, but it is eminently pedestrian. Anyone wishing to watch it should wait until it is available for streaming. Pierre Aim’s (La Haine 1995) lensing will not lose much when viewed on a smaller screen.