Fair Game (2010)

Directed by Doug Liman. Starring Naomi Watts, Sean Penn, Noah Emmerich, Bruce McGill, Michael Kelly, Ty Burrell, Brooke Smith, Liraz Charhi, David Denman. [R]

Based-in-truth saga of CIA operative Valerie Plame (Watts), outed by a leak in the Bush administration in an attempt to discredit an op-ed piece written by Plame’s husband, Joseph Wilson (Penn), who disputed the White House’s lies to sell the American people on their decision to take military action in Iraq. We’re given a peek into the Wilson/Plame household, we see their frustration when they’re set up as fall guys by their government, we witness the consequences on both sides (including the commuted sentence for Scooter Libby after being convicted of obstruction of justice and perjury); John and Jez Butterworth’s screenplay, being based on memoirs from both Plame and Wilson, establishes nearly everything through their eyes, so the “enemy” becomes a shadowy entity heard about on news channels or discussed among their friends (who had no idea about Plame’s real “day job”). It’s a dramatic political exposé pitched and paced like a thriller, and the breathless global cross-cutting amid international stakes sometimes calls to mind director Doug Liman’s earlier pic, The Bourne Identity (without all the fighting and car chases). Sometimes, victims get left behind, like how one short, heart-wrenching scene essentially represents all ofthe various informants who were killed after her cover was blown, but the filmmakers would have needed a limited TV series to correct the movie’s biggest flaw—a motion picture clocking in under two hours can’t possibly give proper coverage to all the moving pieces in play before and after the leak. Watts uncannily calls to mind the image and temperament of the Plame we saw on television; I can’t speak for Penn’s authenticity in his role, but I could never see past the actor’s unbottled rage and outspoken political views whenever Wilson loses his cool, which was often—he sure did like his black eye coffees, though, huh? Liman re-cut the film for Netflix eight years later, changes which include the added postscript of Donald Trump giving Libby a full pardon. Sam Shepard cameos as Valerie’s father.

69/100