Review of Fair Game (2010) by Doctor S — 22 Jun 2012

Important retelling of the true events leading up to and following the White House spitefully revealing the identity of active CIA operative Valerie Plame after her husband Joe Wilson, a former ambassador to Africa, wrote an article in the New York Times criticizing the government's baseless claims of an Iraqi nuclear program as grounds for declaring war. Seamlessly incorporates real media footage to illustrate how Bush's goons built their case for war as propaganda, substituting fear for fact, and the despicable lengths they went to destroy the reputations of two upstanding public servants - and how they fought back.

It was a real treat to see Naomi Watts and Sean Penn reunited after their stellar work in 2003's 21 Grams, with my favorite scenes in the film showing them in heated debate about how to respond to her sudden career crisis. Also, while they do not share screentime together, I was amused by a virtual reunion of Dawn of the Dead actors who played CJ and Steve the asshole. Best "cameo" of all though comes from Valerie Plame herself at the very end in newsreel footage giving a couple minutes of her opening statement of testimony to a senate oversight committee.

A tight screenplay does a good job of detailing the costs and the fallout of this abuse-of-power game, and will get you mad at the Bush administration all over again. While this film is based on the two books written separately by Plame and Wilson, no trace of any evidence of Iraqi WMD's have been found to date ten years onward so I think it's easy to determine which side of this story contains the truth.