Sacha Baron Cohen is Back to Swing the Election in Borat 2 Trailer

From Esquire

With the US Presidential Election just weeks away, Sacha Baron Cohen is back with two big political movies.

In one corner, you've got the Aaron Sorkin-helmed The Trial of the Chicago 7, a re-telling of the court case against anti-war activists who were falsely accused of disrupting the 1969 Democratic Convention. In true Sorkin style, it's a debate in cinematic form, stuffed with speechifying and political cut-and-thrust. That one is in cinemas now, and lands on Netflix on 16 October.

Hot on its heels come Baron Cohen's film for Netflix's rival, Amazon Prime Video, in which he travels around America seeking to understand and heal the political divisions that have led to one of the most poisonous election campaigns in living memory. Oh, wait, misread that. He's going to goad right-wing nutters into shooting him (according to reports, the man behind the moustache had to wear a bulletproof vest while filming, so febrile was the atmosphere).

Related video: Sacha Baron Cohen vs. Donald Trump

Yes, Borat is back. As the pandemic wreaked its havoc, the Kazakhstani journalist has apparently been touring the US in his own inimitable way, such as espousing the antiviral applications of wearing brown paper bags over your head. A new trailer for the movie hit social media today, and you can watch it at the top of the page.

It follows a teaser yesterday, purportedly from the Kazakh Government, praising Donald Trump's performance in Tuesday's Presidential Debate (sample tweet: Congratulation to great friend of the Kazakh people @realDonaldTrump for winning debate today! Impressive and amazing result for a strong premier who always put America and Kazakhstan first!).

The film, which arrives just a fortnight before the election on 3 November, has the full title of Borat Subsequent Moviefilm: Delivery of Prodigious Bribe To American Regime For Make Benefit Once Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan. From that title and the trailer, we can assume it's going to take a sliiiiightly different tone to the Sorkin film. Neither, however, is exactly subtle. In Sorkin's courtroom drama, Baron Cohen utters the deathless line: "I've never been put on trial for my thoughts before, man". In the Borat film, he encourages a man to kill Covid-19 by smashing it with a saucepan. Oh, and the new poster features him wearing a face mask as a mankini.

This, though, is the genius of Sacha Baron Cohen – the ability to satirise anything and everything both with broad strokes, or deft brushwork. And as his work from Ali G to Who is America? has shown, he's most effective when he gets his subjects to skewer themselves.

It is often said that our current garbage fire of a world is beyond satire. For Sacha Baron Cohen, that's challenge accepted.

Borat Subsequent Moviefilm: Delivery of Prodigious Bribe To American Regime For Make Benefit Once Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan will be released on Amazon Prime Video on October 23

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