|
 Fair
Game follows the story of Valerie Plame, a CIA operative working
undercover in the days following the World Trade Center bombings, when
finding and rooting out potential new threats to the country was
imperative. A directive from the White House has the entire office
scrambling to try to find some connection between Iraq dictator Saddam
Hussein and African suppliers of yellowcake, a type of uranium. Plame’s
husband, Ambassador Joe Wilson is asked by her bosses to go to Niger on
a fact-finding mission to determine the likelihood of a deal between the
Nigeriens and the Iraqi government. When Wilson turns up nothing, it’s
not the news the White House wants to hear. Wilson’s expertise is
dismissed in favour of evidence that holds absolutely no credence but is
what the White House needs to support the drum beat of war. In
preparation for the forthcoming conflict, Plame travels to Iraq to find
and remove a consortium of scientists who, if left in their country
might fall into the hands of a more feasible threat, Iran. After George
Bush’s State of the Union address announces the discovery of Hussein’s
purchase of uranium from Africa and the deployment of troops to Iraq,
Wilson questions the factuality of the discoveries in op-ed pieces in
the New York Times, thus forever crossing himself off the White House
Christmas card list. Clearly that wasn’t punishment enough because in
short order, Plame’s identity as a CIA agent is revealed in the
Washington Post, thus nullifying her status instantly and pulling the
plug on whatever sensitive missions were under her command. The
revelation turns the Wilson household upside down as death threats are
called in to their home daily and both Joe and Valerie find themselves
smeared and attacked from all sides. Acknowledging that the leak was an
act of revenge from on high fails to soften relations between Joe and
Valerie, the latter feeling betrayed and ambushed by Joe’s reckless
action that ultimately costs Plame 20 years of her life and causes her
to question her husband’s true motive in writing the anti-war article.
Doug
Liman, director of groovy things like Swingers {1996}, Go {1999}
and The Bourne Identity {2002}, seems to feel that because this
is a true story, the camera must move around as much as possible in
order to evoke a documentary feeling. He nearly undoes his own film in
opting for such distracting, awful cinematography. Silly man, when you
have a story as fascinating as Plame’s, one doesn’t need irritating,
gimmicky camera tricks to compel people to watch. The script is smart
and solid, if slowly paced, with the first act dragging painfully at
times and the lovey-doveyness of Plame and Wilson’s post-exposure
relationship too neatly tied up with a big pink bow. Where Fair Game
succeeds is in showing its audiences exactly what was lost when Plame’s
identity was leaked. How in the war on terror this country can’t afford
to lose as important a weapon as a CIA operative. The callousness with
which her status was revealed is the stuff of bad fiction, but it really
happened: The US government conspired to out its own spy for petty
payback against her husband’s controversial opinion, leaving Plame and
anyone she reached out to in her missions to the vagaries of fate. In
Fair Game, there is a heartbreaking subplot about Plame’s interaction
with an Iraqi scientist who agrees to cooperate with her, naming names
of other physicists in return for safe haven to the US for himself and
his loved ones before the war begins. Unaware that she’s been exposed
and removed from active CIA duty, he has faith in her even as the bombs
fall all around his family home. Naomi Watts does a fine job as Valerie
Plame, smart and efficient, sinking into one fake existence after
another; a good agent and a good, if absent, mom to her two young
children. Sean Penn nails Joe Wilson perfectly; the socially intolerant
intellectual, not shy of his opinions and suffering no fools gladly.
Penn’s Wilson is madly in love with his wife, but that affection fails
to tamp down his grandstanding tendencies, which one could argue got the
Wilsons into the mess they found themselves in. After the leak, Valerie
just wants the story to go away and some form of normal life to begin,
while Joe, never at a loss for words or a juicy sound bite, cultivates a
media circus, exposing the skullduggery of the Bush White House for all
to see. It takes some Zen intervention from Sam Shepard as Plame’s
father, himself a retired military officer to forge a treaty between the
two warring factions, uniting them to face the real battle all around
them.
Pacing
problems and dreadful cinematography aside, Fair Game’s smart,
well-acted true tale of corruption at its most insidious is a timely one
and fittingly captures a sorry moment in American history.
~ The
Lady Miz Diva
Nov. 1st,
2010
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