Fair Game

 

Directed by

Doug Liman

Writing credits

(WGA)

Jez Butterworth (screenplay) &

John-Henry Butterworth (screenplay)

Joseph Wilson (book "The Politics of Truth")

Valerie Plame (book "Fair Game")

Stars:

Naomi Watts, Sean Penn and Sonya Davison

CIA operative Valerie Plame discovers her identity is allegedly leaked by the government as payback for an op-ed article her husband wrote criticizing the Bush administration.
Plame's status as a CIA agent was revealed by White House officials allegedly out to discredit her husband after he wrote a 2003 New York Times op-ed piece saying that the Bush administration had manipulated intelligence about weapons of mass destruction to justify the invasion of Iraq.
this is an adult, engaging portrait of the intelligence community in Washington in the early part of the last decade. It's engaging because all the characterisation is strong, not only the lead characters, and the sketch of institutional politics (and the upstream agenda of the VP's office) has an air of plausibility. Obviously the plot centers around dubious intelligence leading up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Whether it went down like this in reality, or whether it didn't, it's a nice film because some things very probably do, and the execution is well met. think Syriana, not Bourne. There are plenty of films on this general topic of course. But this still feels like it covers new ground in terms of being a movie. It's good. It holds attention.