But more problematic is that the story isn't strong. Is it a love story? Not sure, though it seems to attempt that.
Well, that doesn't live up to the promise either. Is it a character study of how two besieged souls deal with the noir darkness that falls on them? This also is attempted in half measures. Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 3: Has some interesting elements. Valerie Plame, the woman at the center of the story, was a CIA agent who wielded a lot of power during her time working for the agency.
As the film begins, we watch her showing some muscle in the way she moves to get information from a man that had no idea who he was dealing with. During her free time, she was a happily married suburban wife. Valerie was the wife of former ambassador Joseph Wilson, a man who had good political connections. Before the United States entered the Iraq war, Mr. Wilson was dispatched to Niger, where supposedly a large amount of uranium had been sold to Sadam Hussein for the purpose of making weapons of mass destruction.
He went on his mission, but he could not find the information to be true. His report went ignored because the powers that be had already targeted that Middle East country for an imminent attack, based on the phony evidence the people interested in making a statement after the attacks of September 11, , wanted to make a case for the war to happen.
Valerie Plame, whose career had been amazing, suddenly became the scapegoat of a well designed plan to get her out of the way. The order to reveal her name came directly from an assistant of the Vice-President Dick Cheney, Scooter Libby, a star within the privileged circle where he had free rein to do whatever he deemed was appropriate to deal with a contradiction that ruined this woman's life, as well as her family's.
Doug Liman, directed with sure hand. The story plays as though it was really happening. After all, these people do exist; the was a real incident that happened in the not too distant past where it played for the cameras of all the news programs while it was going on. The film speaks volumes of the arrogance which some government officials deal with the people that do not play their game. Naomi Watts shows an uncanny resemblance with the real Valerie Plame.
Watts gives a fairly accurate impression of the woman that was at the center of the political front line during the investigation that ensued. Sean Penn is seen as Joseph Wilson. His character is not as important because it is his wife who is the key figure in the drama.
David Andrews is Scooter Libby. The large supporting cast is too big to mention, but they do a wonderful job as the people in the news that played a part of this recent page on American history.
Absorbing and eye-opening true-life conspiracy drama about CIA op Valerie Plame strident Watts whose life is turned upside down when the Bush Administration has outed her in retaliation to her outspoken husband Joseph Wilson Penn equally good which becomes a down-the-rabbit hole investigation into what really is the price of being a patriot to your own cause or for worse your country's?
My word, the political establishment certainly wanted to go to war with Iraq, didn't it? Here in England, when it came to throwing someone to the wolves because what they said didn't fit the party line, Dr David Kelly's story ended in is tragic death in mysterious circumstances. In the USA the equivalent story concerned Valerie Plame Wilson, a covert CIA operative thrown to the wolves and her Iraqi contacts sacrificed because her husband had vocally and publicly expressed public denouncements of the alleged purchase of fissionable material from Niger as part of Saddam's non-existent by that time nuclear weapons programme.
Dramatised as a political paranoia thriller, the first half deals with setting up the characters, the organisations they work for, the international political situation, and the sort of work Valerie does, not to mention the determination of the White House to believe in WMDs in spite of extensive informed opinion to the contrary.
The second half deals with what happens when Valerie's identity is made public as a distraction measure: the political fall-out, and the pressures on the Wilsons as a family. Doug Liman's film is always absorbing and, if you don't know the story already, you are kept wondering throughout the resolution is rather less distressing than that of Dr Kelly's story.
I have two criticisms. One is the fact that many otherwise dramatic scenes are interrupted by the couple's children needing attention. I think this could have been done once or twice in order to make the point that family life goes on in and around this crisis, but after that it could have been ignored, because it becomes a distraction to otherwise effective dramatic scenes.
The second is that I would have like to have known what became of Valerie's Iraqi contacts who were left high and dry because of the way she was cut loose. We hear that some of them have been killed, but the family we are carefully shown in detail are simply not mentioned again. All in all, though, this is a good movie. Incidentally, Wilson's book, on which this film is based, is fascinating to leaf through - it includes full text but, in order to comply with State Department requirements, much text has been redacted: there are large areas where a sentence simply stops in the middle and is followed by several pages of grey bars, where forbidden text has been blanked out.
Naomi Watts plays Plame and Sean Penn plays Joe Wilson, Plame's husband and a former ambassador who came forward in the media about the bullying and corruption his family was being exposed to. Both give fierce, committed performances; in their hands, the film is as much a portrait of a marriage under stress as it is a rally cry against government irresponsibility and abuse.
It's at times almost ridiculously one sided, falling into hero worship of Plame and Wilson and demonizing the Bush administration and particularly Scooter Libby and Karl Rove to the point of caricature. But as always with "one against the government" stories, practically all we've heard about this controversy both as it played out at the time and since is what the government and the media have wanted us to hear, so it's refreshing to be one-sided in the opposite direction for a couple of hours.
Grade: A-. This is an amazingly well put together movie. The screenplay is totally understandable. One of the best films about the process of going in to the Iraq War and the use of information at the time. I was superficially familiar with Plame's story but did not realize how vital her and her husband's work was in relation to the Iraq war.
Naomi Watts does a very good job. She doesn't overact but you can see her vulnerability and passion. She blends into the role so well that unlike Nicole Kidman you don't think of a movie star acting but you focus on the story. Virginia Madsen looks more like Valerie Plame but unfortunately is now too old. Sean Penn is a bit too unattractive for the role but his acting ability makes up for it.
The production is top notch with an authentic on location feel to it. Valerie Plame's story has to be told in this movie form so everyone can learn about what happened to her. It is a great story about the life of a CIA operative and it's toll on family life. It also is a great story about how the most patriotic acts can be so difficult to carry out in the face of unjust opposition. The movie really deserves some big award nominations. FAIR GAME serves several purposes; it is a thriller of a suspense movie that entertains, it addresses one of the most controversial aspects of American military action in years, and it dares to open the secret doors of the Bush Administration.
The books have been transformed into a bitingly vital screenplay by Jez and John-Henry Butterworth and the film is searingly directed by Doug Lyman. Why the film didn't enjoy a better success in the theaters is likely due to the still festering difference of opinion as to the pre-emptive war on Iraq, a war declared because of the 'evidence' that Iraq had Weapons of Mass destruction that is now approaching 10 years in activity despite the embarrassingly early declaration by that the war had been 'won' soon after declaration.
What FAIR GAME offers is Wilson's defense of his wife Valerie Plame's role in the CIA and how the government dealt with the cover-up and smoke screen and other shenanigans by Karl Rove, Scooter Libby and other White House officials who revealed Plame's status as a CIA agent and were allegedly out to discredit her husband after he wrote a 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.
It is a film about the value of truth and as such it makes us all think more carefully about our current further involvement in the many battles currently being fought in the countries of the Middle East.
There is a speech Joe Wilson gives to his class at the end of the film that challenges his students to always defend democracy - the legacy of our Founding Fathers - and it is this speech that is the most compelling writing in the film.
A fine cast delivers a compelling film and it is a film all Americans should see. Grady Harp. That of course rings plenty of alarm bells because unless one is , having one's secret identity blown spells trouble with a capital T in both the professional realm and personal life safety of family and loved ones. Getting one's back turned by your employer is one thing, but in the high stakes game of intelligence and espionage, getting yourself exposed by the highest office in the land points to being made a scapegoat hung out to dry.
Fair Game had competed in Cannes earlier this year for the Palme d'Or, and has two solid thespians in Sean Penn and Naomi Watts, who had starred opposite each other in two other films before, to thank in keeping the narrative solid and riveting through excellent performances as the husband and wife team who get heavily involved in the analysis and searching for WMD evidence for Langley, and finding themselves at the wrong end of everything just because the powers that be have a hidden agenda and ulterior motive.
Either that, or through shooting by the hip it's tough to retract a gung-ho policy in motion, and blame has to be squarely set somewhere. I sat through the presentation given by then Secretary of State Colin Powell live on TV, and I'm sure many of you did as well as he went through slide after slide, photo after photo in presenting his case for an Iraq invasion.
And who would have thought that this was actually based on non-recent intelligence gathered by the many hardworking men and women working frantically behind the scenes to justify beyond doubt the authenticity of evidence before submitting a recommendation. For what it's worth I learnt something new today, that intelligence could perhaps be a collection of opinions being evaluated for that bigger picture. With any big screen adaptation comes the caveat that there are always certain dramatic liberties being taken to tell a story for the masses, so if you were to keep an open mind, you're in for quite the thrilling ride in this intelligence game about the battle to restore one's integrity.
Way before Wikileaks, the media is used by either side to tell their version of the story, and you have to admit that sometimes this channel is open to subtle exploitation with the skewing of public opinion and distraction through very savvy public relations rather than to focus on cold hard facts, hyping things up in character assassinations and letting the cogs in the machinery work itself.
Sounds familiar, don't you think? A reminder that rings out really loudly come from the different approaches the couple adopted in their response to adversity posed. For Valerie Plame Naomi Watts it is that of silence, preferring to fade away after attempts to wrap up her yet to be completed covert operations become stone walled by her supervisor, which was expected when they had discussed the approach he would have to take should their secret discussions and operations turn awry.
But her husband and former ambassador Joe Wilson Sean Penn is adamant in speaking up against untruths and being played out, portrayed as the bogeyman, and you can't help but feel a little bit inspired that so long as you're speaking up for a true cause, there's really nothing to fear.
After all, the responsibility to keep in check a runaway rogue government from running the country into the ground through immoral and unethical methods, lie with every citizen, not just a select few who may also harbour thoughts that it's their birthright to run the country. If Green Zone by Paul Greengrass deals with troops running around on the ground to find proof to justify their boots on Iraqi soil, then Fair Game is that companion piece that deals with events on a diplomatic and covert level before the invasion, that of course went unheeded, deliberately misinterpreted, and we find the world in the mess it doesn't need compounded today.
Recommended stuff as it takes contemporary politics and massages it into something more palatable with themes to hit home with a resounding outcome. Fairly believable. In the first decade of this century Valerie Plame Naomi Watts was a covert CIA operative, brokering deals around the world to help the peace process wherever the US could go.
The game afoot was the Bush White House's outing Plame as an agent allegedly to retaliate against Wilson.
The docudrama holds to the truth of the circumstances while it adds too much domestic component of a couple with growing children and an enormous pressure on their different responses to the crisis. The drama of a man speaking out against the lies of the most powerful men in history and a wife torn among loyalty to the secrecy of her mission, her sense of honesty, and her honest husband are deftly told without the excessive emoting some Hollywood treatments of political history employ.
Director Doug Liman has crafted a believable story instantly verifiable by those of us who have lived through the futile search for wmd's and Scooter Libby's David Andrews indictment for leaking Plame's identity. The story, however, loses dramatic clarity with its emphasis on the family fighting and care of kids when more could be dramatized about the terrible lies that resulted in thousands of deaths, a shattered economy, and loss of global trust for America.
Read W's recent justification for his presidency so you can have a fair and balanced view of events that have already shaped a century. Leave it to movies to get the history right. SMITH ? The fun would be tactile. The film is also Naomi Watts and Sean Penn's third collaboration, after 21 Grams and The Assassination of Richard Nixon , before seeing it I expected it would more alike the latter, a political thriller, however eventually it turned out to resonate more with the former, a heavily dramatized familial core is the main undercurrent.
Maybe "thriller" could be a moot here, there are no assassination, killing, car chasing or other usual stunt here, the narrative is sinuous for more than one hour and finally approaches the main event, thanks to two lead's splendid performances which largely dissuade the film from becoming a coarse melodrama which covers a story beyond its grasp. The two-play confrontation between the two is the killing for me, although this time is by far not their best performances, their vibes are still fascinatingly touching.
The film reaches its apex almost near the end, which barely leaves any time to chart more details from the final courtroom debate, in my opinion, should have been a much more interesting and drastically investigated selling point, but anyway the ending is acceptable for me, not quite a spirit-inspiring one, instead more heart-felt and pragmatic the no-one- could-break-our-marriage profession sounds harsh and sardonic though.
Finally, I intend to detour the suppressing "individual Vs. No Ado about Much tieman64 25 April Everything is documented. Coups all over the world, financed and planned by the US — it is all available, easily accessible. Nobody cares. We feel free because we lack the very language to articulate our unfreedom. To sell this war, it began a massive propaganda campaign.
The US could not prove this, so they cooked up stories of Saddam buying uranium from Africa. This was a lie. When it got caught in this lie, the US claimed that Saddam Hussein was harbouring the terrorists responsible for the September 11th terrorist attacks.
When it got caught in this lie, the US claimed that Saddam Hussein was responsible for "human right violations" involving "chemical weapons". When it was pointed out that Saddam was used as a US proxy to fight Iran, crush Iraqi worker movements, that these chemical weapons were sold to it by a US that never before had a problem with its allies' human rights record, the US threw a hissy fit and invaded Iraq.
It had attacked the country almost a decade earlier, another war based on fabricated evidence baby incubators, fake satellite photos, the Nurse Nayirah fiasco etc. Bush's attempts to falsify evidence and so legitimise a military invasion. It is based on the memoir of CIA operative Valerie Plame, but such "authentic credentials" lend the film neither urgency or insight. Well meaning? But the problem is, everybody knows even before its instigation the Iraq war was a bunch of lies and everyone knows the United States is an Imperialist bully.
As philosopher CLR James said of Britain's slave trade, "many knowing that it was wrong didn't stop these deeds occurring for four hundred years. Today, it is still backing coups and dictators across Latin America, Africa, the Caribbean and even in Europe a recent 50 billion dollar Ukrainian coup. Indeed, throw a dart at a map of the planet and its hard to avoid hitting a country not covertly or overtly invaded by the US. Three years ago, he began toying with the idea of a re-editing the movie — and that was before Donald Trump was elected president.
In the current manic news cycle, its subject matter has found new currency. This past spring, Trump pardoned Scooter Libby, the former chief of staff to Vice-President Dick Cheney , who had been convicted of lying to FBI agents and a grand jury during the investigation into the leak. What Plame really thinks of Libby, the only person convicted as a result of the scandal, she keeps to herself. But Liman is a tinkerer. Joe and I were very apprehensive in the beginning of the process.
You give up a great deal of control. CNN -- Imagine you found out your best friend -- a wife and mother, and an analyst in the private sector, or so you thought -- was actually a CIA spy. What would you say? Several questions suggest themselves all at once, but probably the most pressing would be this: Have you ever killed anybody? In the film "Fair Game," that is not something Valerie Plame, played by actress Naomi Watts, is at liberty to disclose -- not even after the government she served has pulled the rug out from under her and thrown her to the media wolves.
As we now know, officials in Vice President Dick Cheney's office leaked Plame's status to the media, a diversionary ploy that was alleged retribution after Plame's husband, former United States Ambassador Joe Wilson, complained in the pages of "The New York Times" that the administration had misrepresented intelligence about Saddam Hussein's nuclear weapons program in the lead-up to the Iraq war.
At the CIA's request, Wilson had investigated a report linking Hussein with uranium production in Niger, and concluded it was baseless.
By implying that his investigation was some kind of freebie arranged by his wife, the vice president's chief of staff I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby successfully undermined Wilson's credibility. Plame herself was just collateral damage. While it rekindles a legitimate sense of outrage, "Fair Game" doesn't generate anything approaching the excitement of the Bourne stories.
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