You could be forgiven for wondering whether "Fair Game," a gripping retelling of the Valerie Plame scandal from the perspective of Plame and her husband, Joe Wilson, might not be a few years too late. Getting riled about the baldly political outing of a valuable intelligence agent looks like an exercise in futility, especially since most of the movie's villains will probably never be punished.
Moviegoers inclined to that opinion, though, might find the film compelling in other ways. While "Fair Game" hits all its intrigue-and-outrage marks with poise and power, and should stand years down the road as a righteous account of this ugly, damaging affair, it also offers something not tethered to "Plamegate" specifics. At its heart, the movie is about broader questions involving righteousness and self-righteousness; loyalty to loved ones versus loyalty to the ideals that drew them to us; and whether there's a point at which it is wrong to do the right thing.
So although one imagines the film should revolve around Naomi Watts' strong, complex performance as Plame - who watched as the Bush administration not only destroyed her career but also, as the film tells it, threw Iraqi informants who had risked everything to the wolves - what lingers is the plight of her husband.
Casting Sean Penn as Joe Wilson was brilliant, and not only because he's one of his generation's finest actors. Penn's offscreen political personality totally informs the film's take on Wilson: prickly, sometimes humorless, unapologetic about his ideals and incapable of remaining silent when they're offended.
Not necessarily the greatest qualities for the husband of an undercover CIA officer. Things are dicey enough in the film's first half, during a post-9/11 dinner party where Wilson bristles at friends' ill-informed views on terrorism. But when he sees the Iraq invasion sold using misinformation that involves him directly, all of Wilson's instincts - good, bad and gray - make it inevitable that he will pen the New York Times editorial that has unforeseeable repercussions for the war, his wife and their marriage.
Director Doug Liman leans just heavily enough on the story's personal repercussions to give "Fair Game" emotional heft, but is careful not to neglect the movie's more commercial cloak-and-dagger side. Using chops he showed in "The Bourne Identity" (and which look influenced by its Paul Greengrass-directed sequels), he gives us tastes of Plame's pre-exposure undercover work, then - when superiors are pressured to reassign her in a particularly humiliating way - watches as she tries to circumvent the system and do right by the Iraqi nuclear scientists who provided inconvenient intelligence.
Marble halls and modest Iraq homes contain some of the most Hollywood-friendly and history-relevant drama "Fair Game" has to offer. But it's what happens in the fraying bonds between a woman and her husband, and between the two and their ideals of themselves, that makes the film worth seeing.
'Fair Game'
Our grade: B+
Genres: Drama, Thriller, Docudrama
Running Time: 108 min
MPAA rating: PG-13
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