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FeedMovie Review: Fair Game
Films opening this week:
Cool It - Eastern Hills Dipson
Fair Game - Transit, Galleria Regals
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 - Maple Ridge; Amherst Dipson; Market Arcade; Transit, Elmwood, Galleria, Hollywood, Quaker Regals; Flix - REVIEW
The Next Three Days - Maple Ridge; Market Arcade; Transit, Elmwood, Galleria, Hollywood, Quaker Regals; Flix
After an interesting career trajectory spanning comedies (Go), action flicks (The Bourne Identity), and a mix of the two (Mr. & Mrs. Smith), director Doug Liman takes on a political thriller with Fair Game, a film whose success relies largely on the performances of Naomi Watts and Sean Penn. Watts plays Valerie Plame and Penn her husband Joseph Wilson—both were targeted by the Bush administration when Wilson disclosed its manipulated justification for the second Iraq war. The script from Jez and John-Henry Butterworth is culled from both Plame’s book Fair Game and Wilson’s The Politics of Truth.
Rather than simply pandering to an assumed audience of liberal-minded people, Fair Game captivates as it shows the lengths Plame went to uncover the truth about the Iraq nuclear program, supposedly dismantled back in the '90s in full knowledge of America, and the word-twisting, fast-talking of Vice President Dick Cheney's office as it confuses and befuddles the CIA after its analysts all but assure him that WMDs simply can’t exist there.
David Andrews’s Scooter Libby becomes the villain of this story, the man whose sole agenda is to manufacture facts and put all the government’s ducks in a row. CIA analysts are unable to stake their lives on the hypothesis that Iraq has nothing intended for nuclear use; later they must watch as the Bush administration alters Wilson's findings when he was an envoy in Niger—namely that rumors of a yellow cake deal with Iraq were unfounded. Wilson tries to set the record straight and come forward to disprove statements that uranium from Africa was on its way to the Middle East, which sets the stage for the series of events that follow.
Fair Game is just as much a family drama about overcoming adversity and becoming stronger despite it as it is an exploration of the politics of betrayal and deception. Watts and Penn are superb on both sides of the coin, showing the passion of their ideals, the frustration of what’s happened to them, and the emotional turmoil threatening their marriage. The supporting cast is great too, including the CIA agents—Michael Kelly is a standout; the enlisted civilian spies—Liraz Charhi shines here; or Khaled Nabawy’s Hammad, the man caught in the middle and branded a terrorist when, according to the film, he was simply a physicist looking to get his life back.
Dinner party scenes where Watts and Penn are unable to reveal their firsthand experiences amid wine-fueled debate over the war are also compelling. Whatever your politics, now or then, the intensity and intelligence of this real-life spy movie makes it a riveting must-see.
Fair Game 7/10
photography:
[1] NAOMI WATTS and SEAN PENN star in FAIR GAME. Photo Credit: Ken Regan © 2010 Summit Entertainment, LLC. All rights reserved.
[2] (L to R) MICHAEL KELLY, NAOMI WATTS and NOAH EMMERICH star in FAIR GAME. Photo Credit: Ken Regan © 2010 Summit Entertainment, LLC. All rights reserved.
