Review of Fair Game (2010) by Ryan D — 08 Apr 2011

Here we go again... Doug Liman (of Bourne fame) directs this political thriller, but I think the issue caused with this is the twisting of the facts and making it seem like the heroes in the story are always just and right.

In a bit of the same way that Green Zone infuriated me with the twisted facts this movie went above and beyond that call. It begins with a harmless enough trip for Politician Joe Wilson (usually a good actor Sean Penn just seethes with anti-administration anger) to Niger to investigate if Iraq bought enriched yellow-cake Uranium from the African nation.

Then it just spirals out of control with claims that the Bush administration lied to go to war and got the facts wrong. From my military experience in US Army Intelligence I know how intel can be used and misused to meet political agendas, and this movie shows that clearly.

Of course the film focused too much on uranium and not enough on the other stuff that Saddam actually had. It's basically a Hollywood Propaganda film trying to persuade the audience into believing those in control at the White House in 2003 were evil and vile men who wanted to go to war no matter what.

That's only partially true. What the film didn't tell you is that while Valerie Plame was an actual CIA Agent who focused on Foreign Nuclear Programs, she was not an expert on Bio/Chem warfare and it never touched on the Bio/Chem weapons that Saddam developed and actually used against his own people, he had them, that fact is undeniably true, but instead they focused on the fallacy that he had a nuclear weapons program that in fact did not exist.

WMDs are WMDs, just like a tree is a tree no matter what it's specific name is. While there haven't been any discoveries (at least those not disclosed to the public- when there are several that are classified) of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq doesn't mean there weren't any.

Back to the film, while the acting was great, it was overshadowed too much with the whole agenda the filmmaker was trying to achieve and pass along to the viewer. You can serve me up a plate but that doesn't mean I'm going to eat it.

This film just overflows with a little too much anger, hate and animosity toward our former leader and theres already too much of that going around to begin with. Not my cup of tea.