Fair Game

Rating: ****

Movie Review: Fair Game Former US Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson (played by Penn) asks a very good question in Fair Game: how did the question shift from why we went to war with Iraq to who my wife is? And that lies at the centre of this film about Valerie Plame,a covert CIA operative who was casually sacrificed by the Bush administration in an effort to silence her husband,Wilson,for suggesting that the White House had gone to war with Iraq manipulating intelligence to indicate WMDs.

Through just six words in a story discrediting Wilson,Plame’s identity was given out — the suggestion being that Wilson was just spouting what some CIA agents believed. Plame’s life turned inside out and her career of 20 years went up in puff.

What Doug Liman does very successfully is bring it all together: giving a sense of the urgency with what the Bush administration wanted the Iraq war to be about WMDs,and the intelligence from many quarters that indicated there was no proof of the same,to establishing the credentials of both Wilson and Plame as experts who knew what they were talking about and felt duty-bound to speak out,to underlining how media can be manipulated to dictate the agenda.

Aluminium tubes,their thickness,compatibility with centrifuges,fissible uranium,hounded Iraq scientists,down to the inside workings of the White House and CIA,it can be a complicated maze,but Liman makes his way around this all deftly to give a clear — if one-sided — picture of a presidency intent on war (the film is based on two books,written by Plame and Wilson each). It may stop short of indicting George W. Bush but his vice-president Dick Cheney is clearly the bad guy here,with his staff repeatedly dropping in to grill CIA analysts,pushing to have them say what Cheney wants to hear.

Fair Game also gives an idea of the cost that was paid for the way Plame was treated: including two dozen-odd Iraqi nuclear scientists,who were banking on her to get them out,just being left to their fate by the CIA after she was compromised (which could be a little stretched). Plame paid a personal price too,which included death threats and the strain on her marriage as Wilson fought out their case in the media,which she felt achieved little.

While Watts does quite okay,Penn turns in a nice portrayal of an influential retired ambassador who now finds himself powerless in ways he never imagined he could be.

If Fair Game lacks anything,it is in making Plame and Wilson more of a family. While a wife whose job takes her to places that have to remain confidential by force doesn’t help make much of a marriage,Watts and Penn seem more connected by circumstances than choice.