Andy Garcia as Mikheil Saakashvili

The star of Godfather III star has apparently been enlisted to play the Georgian President in an upcoming film depiction of the August war: Television pictures showed Garcia holding court in a suit, red tie and a lapel pin bearing the red-and-white Georgian flag in Saakashvili’s office in the presidential palace. [See above.] The plot ...

By , a former associate editor at Foreign Policy.
578943_091019_garcia2.jpg
578943_091019_garcia2.jpg
US actor Andy Garcia in the role of Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, sits in Saakashvili's office in Tbilisi on October 19, 2009 during filming. Garcia has arrived to portray Georgia's flamboyant President Mikheil Saakashvili in a film on last year's Georgia-Russia war, local television reported. Finnish-American action movie director Renny Harlin announced in August he was shooting the film. AFP PHOTO / POOL / IRAKLI GEDENIDZE (Photo credit should read IRAKLI GEDENIDZE/AFP/Getty Images)

The star of Godfather III star has apparently been enlisted to play the Georgian President in an upcoming film depiction of the August war:

Television pictures showed Garcia holding court in a suit, red tie and a lapel pin bearing the red-and-white Georgian flag in Saakashvili’s office in the presidential palace. [See above.]

The plot revolves around an American reporter who gets caught in the crossfire as war engulfs the country, testing his impartiality as a journalist. Papuna Davitaia, a parliament deputy from Saakashvili’s ruling United National Movement, is one of the producers on the project.

“Our main concern was to show war as a bad thing,” executive producer Michael Flannigan told Georgian television. “We had an opportunity to make a really anti-war film.”

Garcia’s actually not a bad choice for Saakashvili, though it’s pretty doubtful that a film backed by Saakashvili himself and helmed by  the director of “Deep Blue Sea” and “Cliffhanger” is going to accurately capture complexity and moral ambiguity of the August war.

On the other hand, all will be forgiven if they can get Daniel Craig to play Putin. 

IRAKLI GEDENIDZE/AFP/Getty Images

Joshua Keating is a former associate editor at Foreign Policy. Twitter: @joshuakeating

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