On July 14th, 2003, the Bush administration, in an effort to bolster waning public support for the war in Iraq, leaked the name of a CIA operative to The Washington Post to discredit her husband’s criticism of the conflict. Valerie Plame Wilson, wife, mother, spy. The lead up and escalation of this disclosure is examined in this, the latest thriller to join the sub-genre of Iraqi war films currently dominating political cinema, and is directed by The Bourne Identity’s Doug Liman. It stars Naomi Watts as Plame, and Sean Penn as her former-ambassador husband Joseph C. Wilson, whose vitriolic outcries in op-ed articles apparently pushed his wife into the political crosshairs and public spotlight.
The story is, at first, tightly constructed, spending the first half of its running time building up Valerie’s credibility as a CIA agent, sometimes working, sometimes not. Firstly, she’s flitting around Kuala Lumpur, turning hostiles into defecting assets. Then she’s the penetrating analyst, probing deep into the murky world of aluminium tubes and the lynchpin of the CIA’s official position denying an alleged sale of yellowcake uranium to dodgy Iraqi types. Then she’s training immigrants to return home and dish the dirt on Saddam’s strategies. But don’t worry, there’s still time for her to make it home and get that soufflé to rise for a dinner party where the guests’ discussion debriefs the audience of the technical espionage chatter through broad and occasionally distasteful descriptions of the Middle East. All in a day’s work for Val and America, fuck yeah.
While Valerie is perhaps overly depicted as the consummate covert operative, flawless in her execution and analysis, the scenes of her in the field are as thrilling as anything Jason Bourne does. Knowing that this is based on a real person, there is a palpable sense of danger and tension as her fieldwork unfolds, with locations and photography lending a gritty realism to matters. In fact, location is one of Fair Game’s greatest strengths, with its warts and all pictures of Niger, and particularly shock and awe Iraq, reminding us that Liman knows how to frame an action shot.
It’s home life that lets this picture down, however, with Sean Penn bearing the brunt of a particularly unsympathetic role. Wilson is portrayed as an I-told-you-so bully, the worst type of liberal, whose flamboyant use of passionate rhetoric destroys his wife’s career. There’s a sense of chalk and cheese in the couple, with Watts nailing a chalky fragility and Penn stinking it up as Raclette radicle, whose dogged pursuit of the truth may well have been just, but perhaps ill advised. For example, the leak leaves Valerie’s Baghdad based assets in mortal peril, but Wilson is more interested in a juicy soundbite. Just what justice is he looking for – retribution for his wife, rectitude for the ongoing war, or a smug stroking of his political ego and two fingers up to the Man?
Then there’s the hasty shift of focus away from the political uproar to marital mix-up, with the strain of events taking its toll on the state of Plame and Wilson’s union. Frankly, it’s hard to go from watching an Iraqi mole trying desperately to get his family to freedom to caring about whether Val and Joe will patch things up for fondue night. This turn takes a fine political thriller and merges it with a melodrama, losing the film’s momentum and this viewer’s attention.
3 Likes.
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