'Borat' Hits the Road

Fresh Air | By David Edelstein

Published November 2, 2006 at 11:00 AM EST

The 35-year-old English comic Sacha Baron Cohen speaks fluent Hebrew and was educated at Christ's College, Cambridge. But his best-known alter-egos are the white gangsta rapper Ali G., a flamboyant queen named Bruno, and the Kazakh journalist Borat; each less inhibited than the next.

Now Baron Cohen plays Borat in a movie that has everyone from rodeo cowboys to the Anti-Defamation League to the government of Kazakhstan up in arms.

David Edelstein

David Edelstein is a film critic for New York magazine and for NPR's Fresh Air, and an occasional commentator on film for CBS Sunday Morning. He has also written film criticism for the Village Voice, The New York Post, and Rolling Stone, and is a frequent contributor to the New York Times' Arts & Leisure section.

See stories by David Edelstein

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