Naomi Watts coldly plays the lead in this film and I was somewhat disappointed in her portrayal until about the last 15 minutes of the film. Sean Penn who plays her husband, actually does an amazing job. He is a bit over zealous, but it fits. Shot against a gray backdrop of Washington, DC, we are shown the inner workings of how the CIA gathers intelligence and tries to decide what it means. One actor was perfect when he said “you cannot put a number to information, it is not an exact science”. Director Doug Liman does a nice job transitioning the tale to the screen and I applaud the effort.
I have to say in this present day of political name calling and mudslinging, this movie fits right in. I would like we were past throwing a Presidents name around to get ratings, but it figures Sean Penn would choose this particular film to jump on his anti-Bush, anti-Republican campaign. I think they over use a lot of the old footage from the media of that time, but the film makes a great point about not believing every single thing we hear from the press or the government. Check the sources when you can. I just wish the overall feeling was more about the characters and their lives than the political feelings of that era.
© Stephe Raven, radionraven2010@gmail.com
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Fair Game is fantastically acted and well produced. It was a facinating presentation that made the time spent in the theater fly by (especially considering that spy stuff would normally bore me to tears.)
Fair Game is a film about the true life experience of ex CIA operative Valerie Plame. She was outed as an covert CIA operative by White House personnel because her husband, Former Ambassador Joe Wilson objected publicly and in print to the lie that George Bush told in his January 2003 State of the Union Address. That lie was "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." That lie had been specifically called unreliable by both the CIA and the US State Department before it was put into George Bush's speech.
The movie also deals with the "aluminum tube = centrifuge parts" lie.
The movie also adds a fact new to me that Valerie Plame personally had specific communications from at least one of the pre-First Gulf War Iraq nuclear scientists that the nuclear program of Iraq was never reconstituted.
Because this movie is not a primarily a political peice, it in no way deals with all of the Pre-Second Gulf War lies that were used as a false justification of that war. Rather it deals with what the Bush People in the White House did to Valerie Plame personally to punish her husband for telling some of the truth.
When reckless and false statements are made to induce a nation to go to war are made that is lying. According to the former prosecutor who put Charles Manson away, they are actually actionable as murder.
Did you watch the movie Raven? Did you read any of the press reports, She was not outed because she did not cook the records. She was outed because her husband told the press about the "Uranimum for an African country to Iraq" lie.She wanted to keep a warp on the lie and get the scienctists out of Iraq.You applaud Penn in one paragraph and take nasty shots at him the next. He is good but, I am outraged act. Wilson was not a Republican. Bush senior called him a great America. It is a exciting piece and the best performance by a male actor so far this year.