Fair Game

Like an unpleasant memory, George W. Bush has been removed from mothballs and made his way across the media landscape in the last few days to promote his memoir. Some of the revelations from the book haven't made anyone miss his leadership, especially his remark that the worst moment of his presidency was getting dissed by Kanye West. As many noted, that apparently beat out the tens of thousands killed in Iraq over a lie.

That's the story at the heart of the thrilling new film Fair Game, directed by Doug Liman. But politics aside (this film won't be popular among the Fox News crowd), it works on several levels, not least of which that it is an affecting portrait of a married couple in turmoil.

Naomi Watts stars as Valerie Plame Wilson, a CIA operative who lives in Washington with her husband, the former diplomat Joe Wilson (Sean Penn). I liked the way we see how someone in Plame's position works--the day-to-day stuff that isn't exactly James Bond (but on occasion comes close). The film begins shortly after 9/11, and Watts is part of a team working on tracing a possible sale of yellow cake uranium from Niger to Iraq. Since Penn is an expert on Africa, she suggests to her superiors that he might be of use. Wilson agrees to travel there, without pay, and comes to the conclusion that the sale never took place.

The White House, personified by the unctuous Scooter Libby (Vice-President Cheney's chief of staff), shows up in person at CIA headquarters and shakes the tree until he gets someone to agree that Iraq has the capability of making nuclear weapons. Bush, in his state of the union address, declares that the yellow cake sale took place, much to Watts and Penn's astonishment. Penn, a prickly fellow who for an ex-diplomat isn't terribly diplomatic, writes an op-ed in the New York Times stating that the administration is full of it. Stung, Libby (and by association Karl Rove) fight back, and a column by Robert Novak outs Plame as a CIA agent.

Penn fights back by taking to the airwaves, while Watts, unable to speak about her tenure as an agent, withdraws into a shell. She is taken off of all cases, including an attempt to help an Iraqi scientist escape from the country. She receives threats and the right-wing media engineers a smear campaign against her and her husband.

All of this is told in exciting fashion, with a terrific screenplay by Jez and John Butterworth. I am always a sucker for a film that tells a complex story in a straightforward manner that makes clear who everyone is and what's at stake. As I said, the politics are not objective--Libby is presented as a villain, and Watts and Penn as true blue heroes--but there are several other themes at work, namely the way that in the 24-hours news world, saying something loud enough and often enough seems to make it true, whether it's that Iraq has WMDs or Barack Obama was not born in the U.S.

All of that would be fine, but Fair Game ups the ante by being a very good character study. Watts and Penn are both wonderful in their roles, and the tension the crisis plays on their marriage is the emotional center of the film. The only conversation missing from the film is the one that must have taken place after Watts first knew Penn's article appeared: "Maybe you could have asked me about this before writing it?"

Liman's direction carries over a bit from his work on The Bourne Identity. There's lots of handheld camera work that wasn't always necessary, although I did like a scene when the Iraqi scientist is in his car with his young son, bullets flying around him, and it's all shot from the back seat of the vehicle. In a certain sense I liked this film in despite of Liman's direction, concentrating more on the script elements that worked so well.

Note: when Googling "Fair Game," the first dozen or so images all relate to the other film by that name, the one and thus-far only film to star Cindy Crawford.

My grade for Fair Game: A