Special Correspondents is a 2016 British-Canadian-American satirical comedy film written, directed by and starring Ricky Gervais. The movie was released worldwide on Netflix, after premiering on Tribeca Film Festival.
The movie follows news radio journalist Frank Bonneville (Eric Bana) and his trusted technician Ian Finch (Gervais). While the former faces trouble in his job, having broken many laws to get news before anyone else and is close to getting fired despite his popularity, the latter faces troubles in his marriage as his wife Eleanor (Vera Farmiga) finds his job and his personality boring and uninteresting and one night cheats on him with Frank, prompting her to ask for a break in their marriage.
Ian and Frank are tasked with covering the current tensions in Ecuador, but Ian loses their passports, money and plane tickets throwing them in the trash instead of doing so to a letter to Eleanor. With both in trouble at their jobs, they decide to hide in the attic of their friends Brigida and Domingo (America Ferrera and Raúl Castillo), a Spanish couple that owns a cafe and pretend to be in Ecuador, transmitting their story from there. Things quickly snowball when they become the target of national attention from the public and the government by creating a fake mastermind behind the militia forces and feign being captured as hostages by him.
Tropes
- Actor Allusion: To one of Eric Bana's previous roles. One of the superhero figures displayed prominently in Ian's apartment is the Hulk.
- Attention Whore: With her husband being a target of national attention, Eleanor takes the opportunity to become America's sweetheart by releasing her music at the same time that she starts a campaign to gather money to pay any ransom Ecuador's militia might ask. She then becomes the cover for several magazines as an American crusader and by the end is releasing a full album and a perfume line.
- Bad Boss: Played with. The characters' boss is called a good boss at one point, but a terrible human being, seeing as, after their station sky-rocketed to the top with the kidnapping incident, he couldn't care less about the fact that two of his employees are kidnapped.
- Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Eleanor pretends to be a loving wife worried about her husband but uses the tragedy to kickstart her career and get the spotlight.
- "Could Have Avoided This!" Plot: If Frank had been paying more attention to the news, he would've seen that Ecuador closed their borders and have been able to use that as an excuse for not going before he claimed to already be there to his boss on the phone. He even winces regrettably when the boss tells him as such.
- Everyone Has Standards: When Frank admits to Ian he slept with his wife, he adds that he did not know that Eleanor was Ian's wife, saying he would never do that to him. He's actually pretty outraged the minute he does find out she's married, although she points out to him that he's just as bad if he suspected she was married and still slept with her anyway.
- Foreign Remake: Of the French film Envoyés très spéciaux.
- Henpecked Husband: Ian is deeply in love with Eleanor and really wants her back even though she is clearly falling out of love with him.
- If It Bleeds, It Leads: Frank's newscast is very much full of make-believes, in order to make whatever news he comes across into juicier stuff. He starts doing so by turning a murder into a Russian mafia war.
- Manly Man and Sensitive Guy: Frank is a very masculine looking ladies man with a dramatic flare on his news while Ian is nerdy, recluse and meek.
- One Degree of Separation: Frank doesn't realize until seeing her on TV that Ian's wife who he constantly mopes about having left him is the same Eleanor who he slept with at the beginning of the film.
- Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: Frank's dirty tricks to get news before anyone else get back to the news station and he is very close to being fired since he is committing actual crimes, such as impersonating a police officer and disrupting investigations.
